Raccoon City : Demon's Gate REvisited
by Windra
Summary: Chp. 7 live! Raccoon City, like many places in the world, has a secret something much darker than the old urban legends told time and time again. Now, a once average 13year old girl must survive it, or join the ranks of the undead. R&R!
1. Teenage Dilemma

**Raccoon City: Demon's Gate**

_Chapter 1_

_Raccoon Today  
September 16, 1998  
**DAYLIGHT SLAYING? CLOUDS LOOM OVER RACCOON CITY**_

R.P.D announced it will set up a special join investigation HQ for a serial murder case in which over 30 murders have already occurred.

While there is no connection between suspects, the methods in which the victims were slain are all similar. Ordering a joint investigation into the serial murders was the rational thing to do. The scale and the detail of the investigation has not yet been made public.

The authorities have been avoiding announcing any details of the cases. They are sticking with that stance to prevent any copycat crimes from occurring.

Rumor has it that a certain member of the press has obtained some information. The suspect was temporarily insane at the time of the incident.

Authorities continued to take a "no comment" stance on the factuality of those rumors. The case seems quite problematic.

****

  
  


_Raccoon Today  
September 24, 1998  
**AN EERIE VOICE FROM UNDERGROUND**_

Recently there is spooky talk around South Campbell street. It is said that groans can be heard from the drainage system at night.

It is easy to dismiss it as a ghost story that middle school students love to talk about on camping nights. But the amount of missing people has increased rapidly at this locale for the past month.

8 people have gone missing. Strangely, the missing people have a lot in common: They are all single white females aged 18 to 23 with beautiful blonde hair.

The street was wrapped in a dense fog the day after they went missing. From the sewer drain, which runs north-south along the street, a woman's constrained voice could be heard for several hours.

Of course, the drainage sewers have been thoroughly investigated. But neither the missing person nor any traces have been found..

The Police Department has so far denied the relationship with the bizarre incidents that have rapidly increased after the mansion incident. However, the events must be related.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

  
  
__

September 25, 1998  
8:30 A.M.

To many, today was nothing more than another day to wake up to and enjoy or, with some, to hate. Cars that seemed to be absent in the early hours of the morning were making haste along the crowded roads now, only a few hours after dawn had passed and the sun rose to try and reach for its zenith in the mid-autumn sky. The brightening rays of that glaring sun reached down to touch the yellowing and reddening leaves of trees and the quickly drying dew that formed along the tips of the blades of grass. The breeze that accompanied the sun was also signaling the coming of winter, as it brought with it a nip that could snap nearly anyone to attention.

That cold early morning nip was probably the only thing that kept young Rowan Naton from falling asleep on her bus ride to school. Some polar bear in the front of the bus had decided to open his or her window, and the chills that had been sent across and all over her body had still lingered all through the first few minutes of school. It had faded slightly as 8:00 came and went, but now left a numb warm feeling over her body, and because of this she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep her eyes, feeling like lead paperweights, open.

Then again, her mornings had been like this for the past two days, courtesy to the game designed and created by Konami that she had been able to snag with her horror-hungry mind and the $25 she happened to have in her pocket the day she and her family went to the mall a week ago. Since then, one of the nearly famous horror games titled Silent Hill had terrorized her sleep with memories of the dead and the monsters that she encountered in that bloody game. If that was bad, what happened for the past few days was even worse, seeing as how the nightmares seemed to intensify with each passing day, strangely in sinc with her fear of what was happening around Raccoon City in the present. The morbidity of the murders that occurred throughout the city for the past month and the disappearances, blended with the memories of murderous, festering ghouls and beasties of Silent Hill seemed to run alongside each other in her mind. This morning she had woken up two hours earlier than her wake-up call from the alarm clock thanks to a nightmare in which Cybil, turned demon, lurched towards her with a demon nurse and five of the hooked creatures she met in the sewers of the game, screeching and clawing towards her.

So she had been awake since three in the morning with the bedroom light turned on.

"What is the pH of a base?" That was her science teacher, Mr. Korallin. She rose her eyes to watch him point out to a child in the front row.

"Anything above seven," answered the child.

"Good. The color of the pH paper?" He pointed to another.

"Green."

"Correct. The pH of an acid?"

"Anything below seven."

"And the color?"

"Red."

"Very good. How about a neutral?"

There was total and complete silence in the room. The teacher cleared his throat, and Rowan blinked, looking up to find the finger of the man pointing in her direction.

"Rowan, the pH of neutral?"

"Ahh...seven." The words barely made it through her mouth, so she had been somewhat amazed that Mr. Koralling had even heard her speak.

The man nodded, but there was no approving smile on his icy cold face, nor any sign of happiness for his question being answered. Instead, his mouth was set in a thin line. "Correct, but you had better start waking up, Ms. Naton. You've been falling slightly behind for the latter half of the week."

Something within her jerked at the small reprimand, and for a moment she showed her discomfort and nodded. As soon as the teacher turned away to ask another student what color the pH paper showed when in contact with a neutral liquid was, somebody snickered behind her, whispering.

"Poor Rowan's all tired out from having late night visitors. Tell me, who's been keeping you up all night?"

Rowan turned narrowed hazel eyes to face the one behind her. Her mouth lowered into a deeply annoyed frown as they locked onto the green eyes of Mark, the 16 year old punk that had always been noted as one of the meanest children in the school. From the moment she entered the middle school years ago, she had become one of his top targets and was always finding ways to get under her skin. Mark brushed his hand over his forehead to push back the long black bangs, and sneered down at her. He was only a year older than she, but seemed so much taller.

"The only thing that's been keeping me up at night," Rowan responded in a low voice and a dark look in her eyes, "are some ideas for me to kick your ass."

Mark chuckled, then ducked his head to avoid the icy glare of Mr. Korallin who turned in time to see Mark's mouth move to get ready to speak. The man lowered his face to look down at the boy. "I don't think you need to be held back another year, do you, Mark? If you don't wish to be in eight grade for another year, I suggest you keep your mouth shut and your ears open. There will be a test-" he paused for a moment to let the sudden moans that erupted from the students around him silence themselves "-in the coming week, so I suggest you take all the information your cranium can hold and memorize it. Especially you, Mr. Vilon," his eyes fastened on Mark, ", unless you wish to be in your thirties by the time you enter college."

Mark took the insult/reprimand with a blank look upon his face. He opened his mouth to retaliate, but shut it quickly as he seemed to freeze from the glare that was being delivered from the teacher. Rowan couldn't help but snicker, snapped up her pen and pressed it against the paper, taking notes on things that have been repeated for the last few weeks. School had only just begun, but Mr. Korallin...oh no, he wasn't the one to hold off on giving information to the hungry minds of children, which were, at the moment, dozing off into the world of imagination.

__

So much for notes...

About four hours later, Rowan was staring down at the paper she was writing on during her science class, which she somehow meshed into her math workbook. Looking it over, she wondered if she would be able to get a single drop of information from the wretched sheet that was before her. All that was on there now, cursed by her wandering mind, were doodles and some words of what had been said by the teacher. If only she had known that the test would be on the upcoming Monday, which he told the class at the last minute, she would have written more... Rowan shrugged, shoved the paper in the workbook, and shook her head. No worries...these sort of things happened in her life all the time. She would pull through - she always did before. It was a little talent she had - remembering what was important without studying, unless the things had too much information.

For now, however, tests were of little concern to her. Her stomach began to ache, and she yawned, taking a deep breath of the air in time to catch the sweet, tasty aroma of pizza in the cafeteria. Her stomach gave a lurch and so did her steps, suddenly quickening without her recognizing, and she found herself allured down the hallway.

Rowan shoved her hand into her pocket to absently count the change she had, although she knew by heart there was enough. $1.50 in quarters, and plenty enough to fill her hungry stomach. She grabbed at the money and started to turn to the left to continue her trek, and recoiled slightly as a purse made its mark on her stomach. She blinked and growled, watching the girl pass by, then shrugged. She wasn't really one for purses, having brought one to school for a week and finding it exceedingly awkward carrying it around. Sure, it was useful for some occasions, but it got in the way.

Rowan took the left, went down this hallway while pushing her way through the traffic of seventh graders making their way back to class and the eight graders heading to the cafeteria for the same reason she was. She turned left again, down the stairs, and into the cafeteria, the sanctuary for her stomach.

The cafeteria was split into four sections - A, B, C, and D - and held a stage in the front of the large room., There were black curtains tied to the sides of the stage, able to be released on certain occasions, such as concerts, plays, and presentations. In the center of the black-painted stage was a podium with a stool before it, and that was where the Guidance Counselor for most of the students at the school sat - Mrs. Graylee. Rowan looked around and stuck her tongue out at one thought, the sad part of the cafeteria. This place was the meeting place for wrestlers, and this was the area where they tumbled, rolled, and attempted to dominate the other. Thankfully, the aroma of food was enough to wear down any scent of the sickening smell of human sweat.

Even though the school was large, having three stories and designed in the shape of a 'U', with multiple trailers in the back of the school for foreign language classes and two fields for the sports, it seemed to be smaller than it actually appeared.

First things first, Rowan made her way to the left and to the tables closest to the stage, and to the one she normally occupied with her friends. She eyed it with slight confusion, because normally her friends would have appeared before she could, and sat her books on the table. She then swung around and headed towards the already thickening twin lines that held her off from her delicious pizza. There were two doors before them, side by side, each leading to the kitchen which conveniently held two cashiers, one to the left and the other to the right, both equipped with cooks and the plates of food.

After pulling out a pint of chocolate milk from the ice box and a slice of cheese pizza with Italian bread as its base, then paying the cashier what was due (a grand total of forty cents, thanks to reduced lunch), she made her way back to the table marked with her books and, now, her three only true friends in the school. She plopped her tray down and blinked as one of her fries were snatched away before she could even sit down.

That would have been Sarah Tantel, the universal fry-snatcher...well, the universal fry snatcher of their table. She was the shorter one of them all, complete with long black hair tied into a ponytail and bright blue eyes. The small silver necklace of a heart she wore was outlined by the white tee that accompanied the denim jeans. The young girl grinned, shoving the fry in her mouth and snatching up another in the process. Rowan thought about gobbling up as many of the fries as she could, but decided against it. It would be a futile battle.

Victoria Smith, to her right, suppressed a laugh and took a bite of her own pizza. Rowan blinked at that, then shrugged. They were probably on the opposite line she was on at the kitchen, so she wouldn't have seen them. "Sarah's on a fry high today...sort of, anyway." Victoria revealed her lunch tray to Rowan and the others, completely cleaned of any trace of fries. Victoria gave a sigh and placed her meal on the table, brushing back her chestnut brown hair back so that she could see, although most of her hair was tied in the tight little bun resting on the back of her skull.

Rowan grinned, nudging Sarah lightly in the ribs with a light-hearted chortle. "I'm not surprised. It always seems that you're hungry, no matter how many fried you eat, pizzas you nab from us, or the fruit juice things that we all get and wind up watching you chug 'em down." She rose a brow. "You're getting a bit too much like me with that empty gut."

"Least I don't have that big of a gut, right Kristin?" Sarah questioned, looking across the table to the girl with curly brunette hair. Kristin, who had been rubbing lotion on her hands like she did every day of the week, looked at her with a glint of pure malice at that. A yellow projectile, loaded with grease and fat like the rest of its kind, went flying from Kristin's direction and smacked Sarah in the forehead. As the object fell to the table, Sarah scooped it up and shoved it in her mouth without a second of waiting. "Thanks much."

Kristin's eyes flashed with a light ray of anger, but underlining the fierce facade was dry humor. A smile cracked on the brunettes face as she put the lotion in her purse and took a sip of the optional fruit juice you could get at the cafeteria. That was a slight reminder for Rowan, and she scooped up the grape juice she snagged while on line and handed it to her larger friend like she did for the past few weeks. It was more tradition than habit...Kristin was as addicted to the juice (she refused to drink the milk) as Sarah was to fries.

"Keep it up Sarah," Rowan countered on Kristin's part, "and you'll be getting a big gut soon. You know how loaded in grease those things are? If you don't get fat from them, you'll break out like all Hell."

"Then why are you giving them to me?"

"I wanna be one of the first to die laughing when you're face looks like pepperoni pizza." And with that, Rowan took a bite of her...pepperoni pizza.

Sarah stuck her tongue out. "Meanie," she pouted, twirling a fry in her right hand while using the other to sip at her milk. After taking a mouthful she looked to Rowan. "Alright, Ms. Smart-ass...Mebbe I won't invite you." But the corner of her mouth turned upwards, showing it was only a mock-threat.

"Invite?" Kristin asked before Rowan could swallow the pizza. "Where? You gonna leave us out of it?"

Sarah smirked slightly. "To the mall, of course. Tomorrow's Saturday, and I don't have anything to do. Mom and Dad's going down to New Jersey for a little bit, going to a funeral of someone I don't know about. They're leaving me home - with a babysitter."

"Well if you've got a babysitter, you're not going anywhere," Victoria commented, swabbing her mouth with a knapkin. "Sneak out and she'll probably call the police."

"I'm not done yet!" Sarah gave a light joke growl. "Kira - that's my sitter - called last night. Since Mom and Dad left yesterday, they don't know that she called in sick with a flu or something that dries up your skin. She said she wouldn't be able to come over, period." Sarah's grin was mischevious.

"Sounds bad," Rowan yawned. "So if you're parents weren't home today, why'd you come to school?"

"Number one - To tell you the good news about the mall. Number two - They're going to have the neighbors check in. And they have keys to the house - Dad really trusts them."

"It sounds good and all...," Kristin began. She rubbed her temples lightly. "But I don't think I'd go if my life depended on it right now. You heard the news."

"There're too many Vlad the Impalers out there right now," Victoria added.

The black-haired girl blinked and brushed a strand from her face. "Vlad the who?"

"...Nevermind."

"I'm not too happy about going out and getting eaten." Rowan brushed back her own brown hair and eyes the girl with hazel orbs. "You've heard the news. There're thirty people missing now, right?"

"Sixteen," Kristin corrected. "They found more bodies...yummy." Her eyes rolled and her tongue stuck out in disgust.

"Whatever. They're getting more rapid, like the dogs. One went after me the other day, almost bit me." She brushed her hand. "Don't know what the hell was wrong with that thing."

"Nana's been acting wierd, by the way," Kristin finally cut in. Nana was her Russel Terrier, and not very old - only about two years. And the dog was usually in tip-top shape because of her tendency to run around the house nonstop for a good half-hour, not seeming to wear out unless her bladder was full or her stomach was empty.

"Even the dog's know something's up," the chestnut-haired Victoria noted.

"Relax!" Sarah waved her arms in the air to silence them. The conversation's been drifting off for too long without her saying anything. "We'll be in a group, for one thing, and nobody'll mess with anybody in a group. I doubt their that stupid. And the mall is packed with people - if anything happens, others will see and help, am I right?"

"...Ah..."

"I'll take that as a yes," Sarah frowned, eyeing all of her friends, who all seemed to give the same response at the same time. "C'mon...what's life without risks? Victoria, there's a silk dress at the mall with you're name on it!"

Victoria paused in her eating and looked up with a slice of pizza dangling from her mouth. She blinked a little and swallowed her food quickly, swabbed her mouth, and grinned. "What time?"

"Vic-" Rowan began.

"She's right. We'd be safe in a group."

Kristin, who had been sitting back, saying nothing, rose her eyes to look at them all. "Well...I don't want to stay home all weekend. My parents wouldn't drive me to anywhere I want to go anyway..."

Rowan rolled her eyes and gave a deep, aggrivated sigh. She buried her forehead in the crook of one arm, and her voice, disdained and somewhat annoyed, reached them all. "Fine... What time?"

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

  
  
****

"I'll be honest...fellas. But...I could've used a little more cowbell."

Rowan cocked an eyebrow in wry amusement as she watched Christopher Walken perform on the hit comedy show Saturday Night Live, bored by the fact that it was a rerun but amused by the simple hilarity that came from it. Still, all the humor in the world couldn't really lift her spirits at the moment, mainly because of the tension that took hold of every muscle in her body, and the fear that made her shiver even when her room was warm.

Her parents hadn't been too happy when they heard about Sarah's invitation to go to the mall with her, permission granted to her by her 'babysitter'. They clung to the news reports and the recent attacks of cannibalism like it was the only thing they could believe in life, and in truth she agreed completely with them. As much as she yearned for independence like any teenager would, she didn't want to get killed doing something this simple and normal. Of course, people died every day, but not this rapidly.

The fact that another body, this time one of a young teenager no older than 18, turned up along Main Street, only a good ten minutes walking distance from their house, didn't make things any easier for any of them.

Eventually, Rowan's parents, her mother and her stepfather, since her mother had divorced Rowan's father many years back due to abuse, relented, but from aggravation. There was fear and anxiety in the pit of her stomach, and every inch of her heart seemed to be lined with guilt. What if they were right, that the killings could probably happen to anyone, even her? What if being in a group didn't matter when some sadistic serial killer came after you?

As Rowan flipped off the television and pushed herself into bed, giving a small goodnight kiss on the forehead of the kitten that slept beside her, her mind was so busy that she was amazed to find herself able to sleep. But it wasn't one that would be refreshing, and if anything it put more on her mind. Every segment of her dreams contained every last drop of information that had been aired on the television news stations, starting from the first cannibal attacks in July that ended abruptly after the S.T.A.R.S. had supposably blew up the Spencer Estate deep within the woods.

And then her dreams began to drift to the current murders, the current missing people. Photographs generated by her imagination more than her own memory, since they never showed the mutilated bodies in the papers, appeared before her.

Before she woke up in a cold sweat just before dawn, she had seen in her dreams the ripped and torn body of her own, drenched in blood from head to toe, eyes glazed, mouth agape in terror, and numerous marks all across her body, the most noticeable being the enormous bite marks and areas that seemed gored by claws. And then she saw Victoria's...Sarah's...Kristin's...

Her mother's...Her stepfather's...

So she had been grateful to wake up in that cold sweat, torn from that B-rated horror movie of a dream and back into a reality that seemed no better. The kitten, Max, gave a light mew in alarm at the sudden jolt from beside him, and the cat took off out of the room through the door left ajar. Out of the window to her side of her bed was complete darkness, even though the alarm clock on the end table before her read 5:45 AM. Sighing in both relief and fatigue, she lay back down and stared at the ceiling.

Last of all she wondered if choosing to go with Victoria, Sarah, and Kristin had been the right choice.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep...**

Fin, sort of. I've finished the first REmake of Raccoon City: Demon's Gate. Well, the first chapter, actually. Time to change things around, make it longer. I'm trying to make Rowan's story somewhat more drifted from RE3, and not completely interacting with it, although some of the main events will still occur. (Yes, Brad, the dear favorite chickenheart, will still live!)

Anyway.....I'll update again in about two weeks, provided school doesn't end me before I can.

Oh, and the ...Ba-bump... things are the intervals between each part, since for some reason doesn't allow my usualy line breaker things. The one with the Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep means the end of the story to the Author's comments.


	2. Outbreak

**Raccoon City : Demon's Gate**

__

Chapter 2

  
  


_September 26, 1998_

The first few hours of that bitter morning passed without the silent air of the outside world being stirred by a chirp from a bird or even a song from a cricket. All seemed to remain silent, as if awaiting for the moon to set below the horizon and for the sun to rise in the east, and even as Rowan watched tiredly as the orange-tainted moon, the Blood Moon, fell beneath the mountains and stared on as its eerily-glowing hue faded from sight, and the first hints of daylight appeared on the opposite horizon, the noise that would normally accompany the mornings never did come.

Well, that's at least what she thought. Her eyes lit up for a moment when she heard a blue jay start to sing in the distance, and no less than a second after the song had started, and entire symphony arose from the fields surrounding her cheap little trailer called home. Normally, the sound of those late-night dwellers that inhabited the fields, the forests, and the trees would normally seem to engulf the entire house, something Rowan took comfort in, and something that would often lull her to sleep or calm her mind when it was in turmoil. Now, however, the songs seemed fainter, as if the musicians were moving farther and farther into the distance.

Musing silently over this odd occurrence, Rowan turned over in her bed to lock faces with the clock on her redwood end table. A curse found its way from her lips as she noted how little time had passed - 6:34 A.M..

If only that would remain the time for the next few minutes, or better yet, for the next few hours, mainly around noon, when her mother had given her her word to drive Rowan to the Raccoon Mall to meet up with her friends. That way she wouldn't have to feel the overwhelming sensation of guilt that plagued her mind even now - the guilt of her parents worrying about her safety. Her own worries had made that feeling no better. Bitterly she wondered if she would make it out of the mall and back home safely without being tracked down by a cannibalistic incarnation of Ed Gein.

The latter thought of the old horror legend that spawned The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not a good thing to bring up to her already overactive imagination, and immediately the images of her own grizzly death were brought to her closed eyes, and over and over again she saw the visions of her friends, dead or dying in massive pools of blood, inhuman and mortal wounds etched deep within their back and their legs, and more prominently, their necks. Reflexively she threw herself once again beneath her blanket and drew it tightly around her, tucking her head in to get ready of that horrible vulnerable feeling that accompanied the visions.

Mentally, she gave herself a kick. Why should she be scared? The mall was full of people, and if something should go wrong, somebody would take notice and call for help, or someone would fend off the wrong-doer, whoever or whatever it was. Plus, she would be in a small but tight group of friend, who would look out for her safety as well as keeping sure to tend to their own. What had she to fear?

Of course, there was still that possibility that there was more than one cannibalistic human in that city of hers.

Rowan winced and closed her eyes tightly, wishing that the sound of those crickets and the early-rising birds of the morning had not wandered off to a farther and probably safer dwelling that morning. She needed their comfort, their songs, to clear that terror-ridden mind of hers.

_Relax... Think of something soothing._

Thinking of nothing calming to quell her fear, Rowan could do little more than close her eyes. When she stirred, the surroundings seemed to leap through the boundaries of time. She felt the warm sensation of the sun peering down on her back, turned towards the window. In the distance, she could hear birds, which were quickly muted out by the noise of traffic and engines revving up. Dawn had succumbed to day.

She opened her eyes to peer at the alarm clock before her. Ah... 11:03 in the afternoon.

_Wait a minute! I'm supposed to meet the others at the mall at noon!_

Rowan seemed to leap from her bed just as a knock echoed on her bedroom door. Just like her mother to wake up late and, in turn, wake everyone who needed to go somewhere at a later time then was meant.

"Rowan, it's eleven o' clock," came her gentle voice on the other side. Rowan let out a hastily whispered string of curses and gave a quick response to signify she was up. She flung herself at her dresser and nearly tore the drawers out of it, searching for something to dress in before she went on her way to the mall. Her friends would be ticked a little if she were late!

**...Ba-dump...Ba-dump...**  
  
_12:17 P.M._

The drive to the mall was unnaturally quiet. While her mother would usually chat her way through the short trip with small talk and being annoying by talking her mouth away, no breathe that passed out of her mouth contained a single note that was meant for Rowan to hear. The 13-year-old girl blinked and looked at her helplessly from time to time, wondering why on Earth she was being so quiet, and then she would remember the argument she had had with them last night about her leaving home when the world outside seemed to be ready to burst with something terrifying. The reluctance that shimmered in her mother's eyes was all she needed to know that her visit to the mall was still not a very welcome idea.

The silence continued on until they were two minutes from the mall, when her mother focused her pupils on her from the corner of her eyes.

"They found another body early this morning."

"Oh?" Rowan's voice copied interest, though her mind was still wandering and tried not to sound too interested, even though the news made her quiver slightly. It was getting bad...bodies by the day. All of them being found with those marks on them.

"I want you to be careful, Rowan. I don't want you to go out until this all gets settled; I didn't want you to go out until everything was cleared up, but-"

"I guess I should say that I want you to be careful, too," Rowan cut her off. She locked eyes with the blue orbs of her mother. "You're no safer than I am. And I have a group of friends to protect me and be safe with."

"You also have the AT&T card. Call if something happens."

"I know."

Celia, her mother, nodded, her black curls bobbing with the movements of her head. The old station wagon pulled into the parking lot of the Raccoon Mall and stopped. Celia shifted the gear into park but left the engine running. "You know I love you."

"I know," Rowan responded, leaning forward and giving her a kiss on the cheek. "And I'll be fine. But _you_ have to be careful, too. And don't go calling the mall ordering me home."

"I will, and I won't." Celia smiled. "Go on - aren't those your friends by the entrance? They look impatient."

Rowan gave a small smiled and stepped out of the car, closing the door behind her and waving her off. As soon as the vehicle was out of sight, the girl turned and took to a run for the revolving doors of the mall. She stopped between Kristin and Sarah, the latter of whom was standing the closest to one of the revolving doors.

"Woke up late," Rowan told them, and absently reached out a hand to tap Sarah on the shoulder, then gave her a little shove, just enough to take her off of her feet and send her stumbling into the revolving door as somebody started towalk through it. In the next minute, Sarah was inside of the mall, staring out of the large window walls with such a fuming look on her face that Rowan didn't know whether to cringe or to laugh.

"It's about time," Victoria said in a mock-angry voice, although it began to crack as her lips turned upwards in a sinister smile as she looked at Sarah on the opposite side of the window. By the time she spoke again, she was holding back chuckles. Kristin was giggling. "A-Anyway... C'mon, let's go in!"

"Clothes shop first?" Kristin asked, tilting her head to the side. "I want to try some things on."

"Will anything fit you?" Sarah joked as they came into the mall. She rammed Rowan in the side before joining the others in their mediocre walking pace.

Kristin automatically slapped Sarah on the arm, although the look on her face was harsh, and the slap harder than playful. Sarah cringed lightly and turned to look downwards, suddenly finding something interesting on the floor as she walked.

"Let's go for clothes first, but I wanna go to the games store!" Rowan whined jokingly.

"On a playstation game kick?" Victoria asked.

"I heard rumor that there was a sequel to Silent Hill."

"After the nightmares you've been having?" Kristin blinked at her in confusion. "And yet you want the second one... You're original." The last words had a sarcastic note to them.

"We'll check out the games after we go look at clothes. I guess...," Sarah paused to think. "Well, we'll just figure out what to do when we're done with the first things. This is the weekend, and a break for us after hard school assignments and the bad news around Raccoon. Let's get a kick out of the day while we still can."

No one argued with that. The group of four friends took to a steady walk towards the J.C. Penny's that was a good walk across the store.

**...Ba-dump...Ba-dump...**

A good deal of time had passed since the four friends entered the huge mall in search of the various things they wanted to buy or wanted to look at. By the time they arrived at the food court, it was 5:00 at night and the sun had already started towards its abode behind the horizon, already three-fourths of the way there. The gang of children, who had entered the place with empty hands and huge grins, now had bags laden on their arms and dragging behind them, and satisfied smirks on their faces. Four seats were taken, the bags were laid on the side, and the table was soon covered with small mini-cartons and paper plates of food.

The only bad thing that had happened at all that day occurred at that time. While they sat and enjoyed their cheap meals of Burger King cheeseburgers and the little baby corn dogs, people around them began to circulate the news of something terrible happening. According to the words that were being spoken, two more bodies had been found, and another person was found nearly dead, apparently attacked but able to get away from the person by limping away, which didn't say much about the assailant other than that he may have been someone slow, but powerful.

"That makes the death toll nineteen, including the one found this morning," Rowan murmured, taking a bite of her cheeseburger.

"I wonder if those were the missing people?" Victoria asked.

"More than likely," Kristin added with a sigh.

"Welcome to Raccoon City," Sarah began, the carton before her that held chicken fingers now empty. She lay her head on her forearms and smiled. "Population : two-thousand and decreasing."

Rowan snickered. "As crude as that was, they should put it up on the highway before anyone drives into the city."

"Way to scare off visitors," Victoria grinned.

"Not like we get many, anyway," Kristin noted. "Anyway, are we done for the day?"

"Done for the day? What planet did you grow up on," Sarah asked her, looking at her without almost pure astonishment. "We still have one thing we need to do..."

"Which is?"

"The movies, of course! Rush Hour just came out, and it looks hilarious. I've heard good things about it."

"I don't know...," Rowan began. "My parents'll be worried sick if I'm not home early enough, and Vic's parents are coming to pick us up at seven. Will there be time?"

"It's about an hour and a half long. We'll be out long enough to relax and get a drink, maybe some ice cream or something." Sarah rose her head and curled her hands together into one fist. "Pleeeeeeease?" Her eyes took on that of a begging puppy.

There was silence for a moment or two, then the other three rose from their seats. Victoria looked down at Sarah with a nod. "Fine, but after that we leave. Even I don't want to stay out when it's as bad as this around the city."

Sarah smiled and picked up her tray of food, her bags with the unfilled arm, and headed off with the others to dump the remains of their food and stack the trays atop the trash can, and then to the Lowes cinema on the opposite side of the mall.

During the trip, Sarah argued that they were getting too much exercise by walking back and forth, which Kristin countered with, "I though you said I was out of shape?"

After playful pushes and shoves between the two, the four of them walked into the theatre and ordered up the tickets to view the movie.

About two miles away, near South Campbell Street, complaints arose from the citizens inhabiting the area of shady figures lurking through the area. In a half hour after Rush Hour started and when the sun had gone beneath the mountains marking the horizon, police had been called to the area, the phone calls being made to them from the citizens there taking up an urgent and pleading tone.

What would occur then would change their lives forever.

**...Ba-dump...Ba-dump...**

Rowan was in the middle of laughing through a part of the movie with most of the other people in the theatre, her friends included, when suddenly the screen cut out and all was black before them. The light above began to brighten, and soon the entire auditorium was lit. Questions and frightened words were passed from person to person, and the room was filled with a loud murmur of voices.

"What the Hell?" Sarah inquired, looking up as if to find an answer in the man running the projector, who was seen talking to somebody in the room who, after a second, left to go to the auditorium. "What's going on?"

Kristin opened her mouth to speak, but paused. She rubbed her hands together and eyed her friends. "Do you think something's happened outside?"

"With our luck, somebody probably got murdered in the mall," Victoria murmured, rubbing at her eyes.

"We're about to find out," Rowan pointed out. She nodded her head in the direction of the doors leading to the main hallway of the movies, where three security gaurds were walking down towards the crowd of restless and now very nervous people. If the security gaurds were involved...

Rowan noticed that they all had their hands by their guns, and the other by their radios, waiting for any word of what was going on in the mall or the outside world. At this sight, she shrunk back, remembering her nightmares. Was there really something that bad going on? She wondered in the back of her mind how other people were reacting to similar things all around the mall.

The security gaurd standing in between the two took a step forward and held out his hand. "If I may... IF I MAY HAVE YOUR ATTENTION!" He bellowed out the last few words as the talking of the people began to raise into panicked and hysterical cries and screams. Instantly, most of the crowd quieted down, the gaurd gaining most of their attention. Satisfied with the result, he continued to speak. "There's been a disruption within the mall and the city itself, and we ask you... we ASK YOU-" -the crowd, having panicked at the words prior, quieted again- "-to remain calm."

"Remain calm?" Kristin hissed. "Is he shitting us?"

"Please make your way-"

This time, the gaurd was not cut off by a the loud voices of the people in the auditorium, but by something outside. There were noises growing in intensity, and Rowan began to wonder if those were people in the other auditoriums, also growing tense and fearful. But when multiple screams of pain broke through that monotonous buzz of noise outside, and the three gaurds tensed their hands and grabbed for the handles of their guns, she knew that the noise was not coming from the people in the auditoriums around them, although she was sure that the screams and the quick thuds of footfalls that were heard came from people in the mall trying to get away from something. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw many people making their way to and through the many exit doors in the theatre, too frightened to face what may come. Sarah was gripping tightly to Rowan's arm, half-strangling Kristin and Victoria with the other, both of whom were shivering in discomfort and fear. Rowan wasn't sure why she hadn't taken off through the exit doors herself.

Second later, screams came from out there, as well. And a few moments after that triggered some panic in the huge room, the doors leading from their auditorium to the hallway crashed inward, and multiple figures landed on the floor with dull thuds and groans, while a few of them were capable of getting through the door without falling. What accompanied them was a disgusting stench that made Rowan's stomach turn, a smell that would never leave her nose.

If that wasn't enough to send the frighten the people, the appearances of the people who came crashing in would, and did, send many of them into frenzies of fear and sent them running to the exit doors leading outside, despite the dangers that may have been there.

The people before them were something that seemed to have come out of a classic horror movie made back in the 60's, although this was more than just simple movie magic. The faces of these people before them, all with no traces of the life that once took hold of them, were deathly pale and matted with blood, while others were scratched and torn to the point where they couldn't be identified. Their mouth were open, their teeth glistening with crimson liquid, and their bodies, ripped and disemboweled, marked with bites and scratches and one or two with huge gashes running down parts of their bodies. Their clothes were torn and bloody, and one of the group of...things... had his clothes so badly torn that he was nearly completely nude.

But the most horrifying, eerie feature were their eyes. Their irises and pupils were all made into very faint specters of their former selves, coated with a thin film of glossy white.

In retrospect, they looked like...like...

_Zom...bies...?_

They even began to act like them. Five of them made to lunge at the gaurds, while the others, their inhuman eyes locked on various targets in the auditorium, began to stumble forward quickly, some tripping over the seats and falling, others being lucky enough to avoid the rows. Gunshots were fired by the gaurds, and holes were made in their chests, where their heart lay. But they kept moving, kept attacking, and kept biting. Two gaurds did not get back up. The third, thoroughly bitten, began to order the citizens out of the auditorium by using the doors leading outside before more of the undead beasts piled through the door by groups of five or six.

Rowan had been standing still during all of this time, and only when the second group of monsters began to head into the doorway did she realize that her three friends had hauled her halfway through the auditorium. Blinking away her stupor, she found her feet and began to run alongside of them, heading to the closest exit that wasn't blocked by frantic people or ravenous creatures.

"What the HELL was that?!" Rowan was yelling.

"They're dead...they're dead...," Victoria kept chanting. She herself looked as if she was falling into a trance. Rowan grabbed onto her arm and shook her, then dragged her behind them. Her steps were growing slow, and Sarah noticed her pace and grabbed her other arm. Together, Rowan and Sarah were able to get Victoria to the nearest exit, with Kristin leading the way.

"C'mon, Vicky, you lazy ass," Sarah growled, tugging her harshly, "speed up!"

A laugh was the only thing that came out of her mouth. But she also broke from the trance and took to a run, stepped on a creature that was hunkered over a body on the floor, made still by the loss of blood, chewing on its flesh. It grunted, but didn't seem to feel anything, although the movement made it aware of live pray and led it to try to stand. It was quickly sent to the floor by a sharp kick from Sarah to its legs.

"What are they?!" Kristin was shouting, slowing for the others.

"Dead," Rowan responded briskly. She tagged after Victoria, who was heading for the nearest door. Before she could catch up to her, the slightly older girl pushed against and opened it.

Victoria was quickly pressed against the floor by the lurker on the other side, and she was screaming, pushing against its shoulder, trying to shove it off of her. The closest person being Rowan, she kicked at the beast, which knocked it off of her slightly. It's arms, however, still gripped tightly to Victoria's shoulders, and they dug into her, cutting with its nails. Another kick was delivered, but the zombie turned its torso towards Victoria and, before it was completely knocked off, managed to bring its gnashing teeth towards the other girl's neck. There was a ripping sound as flesh was torn from the body, and Victoria's scream, mixed with a pained groan, before the zombie was knocked off of her and then thoroughly kicked in the head, which Rowan deemed to be the weak spot after a quick rundown in her mind of the Night of the Living Dead movie. Sarah and Kristin went to scoop Victoria up, vaguely aware that more creatures were coming through the door and charging for them, although they couldn't seem to run.

"Victoria - _shit_ - can you stand?" Kristin was asking quickly. No response came from her bubbling mouth, and blood dribbled from the corner of it. Kristin made the best effort to cover the bleeding neck with her hand, but with the extent of the bite...

"Rowan, make sure its clear out there!" Sarah ordered. Without hesitation, Rowan headed out. There was the sound of a brief struggle and of something falling to the ground, and she returned to the doorway, waving her hand for them to come through.

"Apply pressure to the wound, Kristin! Bring her through!" Rowan was yelling. She had one foot on the chest of a zombie that she was able to knock over, but without anything to fight with, and unable to remove her foot until the three were through the door for fear it would get up again, she could do nothing to help. Around her, others were fleeing the mall, wracked with fear and pain, bitten and bleeding or wound-free, from whatever door they could find. She heard the faint sound of an alarm triggered by somebody walking through a wired exit.

Carefully but hastily shoving Victoria through the only exit that seemed to be devoid of the swarming beasts that filled the parking lot and the small field surrounding the back of the mall, Kristin and Sarah were quick to head to where Rowan was and safely past the undead creature that was pinned to the ground by the foot of its overcomer. Rowan stared down for a moment, only releasing her foot once she was certain that the three were well past the danger point in case the bestial human was able to move after them with sufficient speed, and brought the other to kick it sharply in the chin, hoping to give its brains and possibly the spinal cord a nasty rattle. It gurgled a moan, but its hands still swayed. Yet Rowan had to hold back the bile that threatened to rise - the jaw of the thing was now disgustingly misshapen after that kick.

Choking back a groan of disgust, she took a step back and swerved quickly in the direction of Sarah and the others, taking after them in a run. The darkness of night was descending quickly upon them. The scenery was black, lit only by the streetlights and neon signs, along with the occasional headlights of speeding cars, and the flashes from the crackling guns in the distance and somewhere behind them. The air was filled with screams that drenched the night with a sense of fear, and for a moment, Rowan felt that her surrounding were so surreal and unrealistic that she wondered if she was being delusional. She swayed on her feat for a moment, suddenly feeling light, and firmly shook her body.

There was a rut in the cement pavement before her, and she struggled to regain her balance. When she got on both feet again, she didn't notice the pair of hands behind her, reaching for her shoulders until they grappled her so hard and painfully that it seemed like a wonder its nails didn't dig into her skin. She let out a gasp, trying to twist from her captor, or to at least face it, but she felt herself being pulled back by the strength of... of what? For a moment, the thought of it being a human flashed through her shaken mind, but then she felt the distinct clammy feeling of its hands running through her shirt and to her shoulder. She screamed and tried to pull away.

It was in her best luck that Sarah and Kristin hadn't wandered too far off. They swung around at the sound of her cry, now strangled with utter fear and gasps of terror. Sarah's eyes went wide, and, releasing her grip on Victoria's left side, she began forward at a quick pace, and Kristin released her grip on the injured femme's right side. Rowan saw Victoria sway for a moment, and Sarah rushing to help her, but then found her eyes closed. She was being dragged backwards by those arms made desperate to feed the unfillable stomach of the once live human, and suddenly another pair of deathly hands clasped at her ankles, locking her feet from moving. She didn't have the strength, nor the will, to fight back. For an instant, all those nightmares and visions she had for the past few nights came flooding back.

They were knocked out of her in an instant as she suddenly found herself flying forward and propelling into a body before her, this one warm. It cushioned her fall against the cement, and frantically she fumbled for her footing, fearing it was something freshly killed or something of an abomination. Rowan blinked to see Sarah lying stunned on the ground, and then at the blank face of Kristin about two feet away.

"Victoria?!" The sound came out more of a rash whisper than a scream as Rowan swung 'round to face the two that were grabbing her, and her savior. Before her, Victoria began to slink backwards, but far too slowly. Blood from the bite on her neck stained the white blouse she was adorned in, and only now did Rowan notice an occurring additional wound - a deep slash in her ankle as the zombie limited to crawling due to the kicks delivered from Rowan to its legs slashed in what seemed to be a demonstration of frustration at Victoria's legs. Startled and weak from the loss of blood she already sustained, she crumpled to the ground with a weak gurgle. All too quickly, the two feral abominations grabbing at her clothes and skin, clawing at her body, biting at her flesh-

"_Victoria_!"

The yell did not only come from her. As Rowan took to a run to her disabled friend, she barely took note of the two comrades of her's running beside her. Together they attacked with all the physical strength they could pack into their fists and legs.

The onslaught that resulted lasted only a minute. One of the creatures received so many nasty blows to the head that it fell back and down, never to get up again. The other seemed immobilized, its arms seemingly both broken or the bones so twisted that it could no longer inch towards them, although its jaws still gnashed and its growling moans still rumbled.

Victoria was lying still on the ground, her eyes wide, blood dripping from the new wounds on her cheeks and her neck. Rowan took a step forward, inadvertently bringing her foot to land in a puddle of one of her best friends', one of her only friends', blood, but that didn't seem to bother her. She fell to her knees, the liquid sloshing somewhat at her jeans and seeping into the clothe. Above her, Kristin stared, the lower half of her face covered with the palm of her hand, her eyes wide and watery.

Sarah kneeled to Victoria's head after kicking away the 'dead' undead from her friend, clasping her hands around her cheeks that had so often been found lifting up in a smile or a laugh. "Vicky? Vic?" Sarah sought out the wounds on her neck and applied pressure in hopes to keep the life's blood that had not been lost safely within. "C'mon...wake up." she whispered, though her voice was shaking.

A moment passed. The eyes that once sparkled with life and joy did not shine in recognition or reassurance. The cheeks didn't rise in the grin she usually placed on her face to inspire another, but was instead locked into something of a crazed smile, a small stream of crimson leaking from the corner. It flinched somewhat as the body shook from a small convulsion, but nothing more.

Sarah stared at the limp body before her, placing a hand on her chest to feel for a heartbeat, then on her wrist. She sat silently for a few seconds, and then her hand went flying to and fro across the cheeks of the lifeless teenager in front of them, leaving red marks on the smirking cheeks.

"Damnit! Victoria, wake up! Quit playing!" Sarah was yelling at the top of her lungs. Tears coursed down her cheeks, dropping off and onto the blood-stained blouse of Vicky. The slapping ensued for a moment, and shocked as well as angry at how Sarah was acting towards their friend, dead or alive, Rowan reached out and grabbed on her shoulder, then lowered her hands to her arms and placed them firmly against her sides.

"Sarah...!" Rowan's voice held a harsher note than she intended. She cleared her throat to start over, and hiccuped as it combined with the sob she was trying so hard to hold back. "She's..._stop_, Sarah... Vic-Victo..."

Suddenly Rowan lost all her words to the silent tears that flowed from her hazel orbs. Kristin, from behind, said nothing but took a few small steps forward. She placed a hand hesitantly on Rowan's shoulder, then turned away and walked back to where she was, facing the road, not wanting to face the body that lie in the middle of the concrete parking lot. Not wanting to accept the death of a friend.

A moan from behind them caught most of their attention, and the second and then third ones that followed somewhat snapped them out of their daze, but no their grief. Rowan hoisted herself, losing her balance for a minute and sniffing, then pulled up Sarah by her hand. The latter held her head down reluctantly, and Kristin, her face turned towards the source of the moans, could not hide the glimmer of tears in the streetlights.

From an alleyway a minute's walking distance away, two figures lurched out, their clothes and skin ragged and torn. Another crawled its way out of the driver's seat of a car they only now noticed had its door open and smeared with blood. They were all too close for comfort.

"We have...we have to go. T-there's gotta be some - shelter," Kristin spoke in an uneven voice.

Wordlessly, Rowan walked towards Kristin, a limp and broken Sarah beneath her arm, and all three of them moved as quickly as three broken-hearted teenagers suffering the loss of a loved one and a close friend, but enough to get them away. Far, far away...but not near enough to tear away from the distress in their hearts.

It seemed to be a miracle how they managed to maneuver through the streets and the alleyways, through the parking lots and the backyards, through the darkness and the fear, with the scent of smoke and death around every single corner and route that they took, without once getting bitten, although numerous of the undead humans that took the life of their friend clawed and tried to grab onto them as they half-walked, half-ran past them. The sounds of guns and other noises - the screams, the yells, the shouts and pleas for help - went to their deaf ears. Once or twice, and explosion shook the ground they stood on.

Too weak to keep moving, too tired to keep searching, and too shattered to keep hoping, it was also in their luck to find an old tool shed in the backyard of an almost empty house. Opening the doors of the shed and stumbling in after making sure it was truly empty, they didn't notice nor hear the pounding on the windows of the second story of the house whose backyard held their small sanctuary as a woman fought off a horde of the creatures that managed to get up to that floor. Even if the sullen group had gone up to her, there would have been no way to help. She disappeared from view and her screams subsided in a matter of seconds.

The doors of the shed were barricaded. A small lantern was scavenged and turned on. The tired minds of the teenagers could do little more than rest. Within minutes, they were off to a land that, when it usually brightened them with odd and sometimes happy dreams, was ravaged by chaos and decay.

Outside, something akin to an apocalypse ensued.

**...Ba-dump...Ba-dump...Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep...**

Author's notes: Well...that's finally done and over with. Not much dialogue, but it's better than nothing. - And It's VERY long...My fingers hurt...

Compared to the first chappie of my first version, what'cha think?

Chapter 3 due to be done around...three weeks. It'll be another long chapter, believe me.

JoJo10: No, Rowan's not 15. She's 13. - Mark's been held back in his grades more than enough times to be bullied on himself, but, ahh... Thank you ALL!! 


	3. Return Home

**Raccoon City : Demon's Gate**

_Chapter 3_

  
  


_September 27, 1998_

12:32 A.M.

An hour ago, relentless pounding of an undead on the other side of the barricaded shed doors and the incessant groaning of the beast had woken them all up. Ten minutes later, it pulled itself away, apparently giving up and heading off to search for a meal that would be easier to grab. Shortly after that, the group had fallen asleep.

She didn't move until the snores of Kristin and the grumbles of Sarah let her know that the two were undoubtedly in the realm of dreams and nightmares, and even then her footsteps were quiet and slow. She didn't want to wake either of them up because of her early morning trek - something her body rebelled against, but her mind forced on her. She couldn't rest until she knew the answer, and she didn't want to abandon those she was about to check on by not coming to their aid.

Stifling a yawn, Rowan reached to her left, feeling around for an item she might be able to use as a weapon to fend off the beasts as she headed out. Her hand sought out a thick piece of metal with one curved, sharp edge - a crowbar - and she dragged it out from under the pile of various other things before moving to her left. The lantern that was turned on a little after they arrived in this safety zone gifted her with the sight of a piece of cardboard near the door. She snatched it up and, managing to find a black marker admist the other things, wrote on it a small note:

_I'm heading off to get some food. Be back in a little bit. And don't worry, I'm armed._

If you follow me, I'll be sure to kick your asses. >:o

-Rowan

Grinning, Rowan looked down at her note, idly wondering if it would be the last thing she would ever do or say to her friends, even if it hadn't come from her throat. Shaking her head, the girl turned, brushing back a locke of her brown hair from her eyes. She snatched up a broom that was leaning against the wall of the shed. She slid the stick of the broom through one of the handles on the inside part of the door, and, opening the other, sidles outside and pushed the rest of the broom partially into the other handle, then closed the door, hoping that it would be enough to keep the beasts that wandered the streets in search for food out of the safe-haven of her friends. She silently wished them well...and hoped they would be safe...even if she didn't come back.

Turning to stare at the darkened backyard that harbored the shed they used as a shelter for the night and probably more nights to come, Rowan finally noticed two stumbling figures making their way slowly towards her from an alleyway, having caught the scent of fresh blood and flesh. Another shambled its way through a crack between the fence that surrounded the backyard to her left. It was a miracle she hadn't been pounced on while she was setting up the door so that it would be safely locked from the inside. Looking from one to the other, she decided it would be a good idea to make a break for it, having them follow her in a futile attempt to chase her because it seemed that they could do more than moan and shuffle their feet, occasionally speeding their pace when they saw something they wanted. And besides, if they were chasing her, they wouldn't pay attention to the shed that contained two live humans until she was well out of their reach and they were left unsatisfied.

So she ran through the darkness of the city near midnight, using only the street lamps and pure instinct to guide her way, and using only hope to push her body forward. She had to find out for herself...she had to see for herself that her parents were safe!

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

It seemed like she had been running forever, darting through those small obstacles in the middle of the road and avoiding taking the alleyways in case there was an ambush of undead beasts waiting for her to made what could be a fatal trip through them. More than once she had stopped to take in huge gasps for oxygen, and once or twice she had simply collapsed on the ground to gain her breath, weakened and immobilized for a minute or so, and very vulnerable to the creatures, the once human monsters, that now wandered the streets in search of food. Luckily for her, there had been nothing besides those humans, though at the time she was not aware of the other dangers - and the zombies were not very fast, so a minute to rest did not endanger her.

For the moment, however, it seemed that it would be her heart that would fail and endanger her as she looked on at the wreck that lay before her...at the streets now smeared with blood and haunted by death.

It looked like something seen out of those old black and white movies depicting Hiroshima shortly after it was bombed. Fumes curled into the air like death showing that it had taken presidence here, and Rowan could feel the heat that radiated from the large trailer park as nearby trailers caught flame and burned. Admist the smell of acrid smoke was that of decay, and amongst the trailers and the streets were crumpled bodies - completely gone and torn, as well as those that struggled to stand at the scent of a live one. Blood was splattered in various places, staining the walls of the mobile homes and leaving large pools in the middle of the road. In some cases - Rowan shuddered as she looked at this - there were long streaks in the middle of the road, leading to the large alleys between trailers or in the field that lay further ahead, like something had dragged the dead away to feed privately on them.

It was all she could do to keep walking as she caught the vision of many figures of people she had once known alive and well on the ground, their bodies broken and empty. There was Calvin, the great friend of her stepfather and somebody who always looked after their well-being. The person who had once been so full of vitality was now clawing at the ground, not able to gain footing and resorting to crawling, towards her, low guttural moans issuing from his throat. One look at her legs made her turn her head out of disgust. They look like they ad been chewed through extensively. It was easy to make out the femur bone in that mess.

She jumped at the sound of something pounding against a window nearby, and Rowan shot her eyes to look in the direction of the noise. In the mobile home closest to the entrance of the park itself, the woman named Hallie was pounding on the glass that separated her from the outside world, and to the walking flesh that was Rowan. Her eyes were wide and pale, her face cut in numerous places and bleeding only slightly. But her voice was that of a dying banshee - she was not alive anymore.

Shaking her head, she covered the top of her head with her hand and forced herself to look downward, and then made herself look up, away from the blood-stained streets. If she had only arrived sooner, there would have been people living and breathing, aiding her and being there for her. If she had only arrived sooner...

A bark from nearby startled her into spinning around. She saw sharp gnashing teeth and jumped back - and that was what saved her skin from her first encounter with an undead mutt as it leapt past her and landed on all fours behind her. Rowan could feel its wet, bloody fur rake against her neck...too close.

Spinning around again, she held up her only weapon, a crowbar, in defense. Like it would do any good against something with much more stamina and speed than a human being, and with sharp razor teeth and blunt but powerful claws. The Rotty that faced her snarled and growled, at the same time allowing blood won from other fights it had with various living humans ooze from its clamped and crimson-smeared jaws. It's rotting body shook as it growled, and then it was in the air again. Rowan jumped to the side, narrowly missing it once more. At the same time, she brought the crowbar up and swung, missing the body but striking the hind leg.

It landed and turned toward her, its back leg hanging limply. Did she break the bone?

_Here, Fido! Here boy! Go fetch a bone!_ her mind laughed nervously.

It leapt again, and this time she was not prepared - it was lunging head on at her, aiming for her face. She brought the bar up again, clasping it with both hands to bar the beast's gnashing teeth from her skin. It's line of fire intercepted by the bar, the dog grabbed onto the bar instead, by accident. It was then trying to tear it from her, like it knew that was the only weapon she had.

It let go at the last minute and aimed for the hand trying to pull it back. She was quicker - she lifted the hand it was after in defense, and with the other, brought the bar slamming into the beast-

-and into its skull. It fell down, dead.

_How can something be dead when it's already dead?_ Rowan shook her head at that paradox. An image of Frankenstein, the infamous mad doctor from Day of the Dead, popped into her mind. She grinned. _I'll just say...It has ceased to exist._

She yanked the crowbar from its skull, sticking her tongue out in disgust at the blood coating the sharp end of the crowbar. Wiping it on the patch of grass nearby, she looked the canine over, blinking. _So...dogs turn to? Into zombies?_ She stared at the crowbar. _I need a better weapon..._

Laughing inwardly in a frightened manner, she continued on. In less than a minute, she saw her own trailer.

She gasped aloud in shock.

The door was broken open, blood smearing the outside of it and pooling on the steel steps leading to it. Crimson flecks were smeared on the window of the kitchen.

There was no sound from inside. Rowan was suddenly reluctant to go in, but she forced herself too. She climbed the steps with a numb feeling over her body, holding the bloodied crowbar over her head.

On entry, she saw two figures lying on the floor. One of them was a child that lived across the street from them, her mouth gaping wide. there was a large bite wound on her neck, and her eyes were wide and glazed. Her face was deathly pale, but had flecks of dried and old blood marking it. There was also a nice deep gash in its forehead, more than enough to take a zombie out. Beside her was Celia, Rowan's mother...long dead, with bites all across the empty shell that was her body.

Rowan looked on for about a minute, staring dumbfoundedly. Then she fell to her knees. "Mother," she began, her voice wavering. "Mom...mommy. Why..." Two tears fell from her eyes, and her fists began to clench and unclench. "I... I _told you...you had to be safe too!_"

Her shout seemed to shake the trailer. Outside, zombies stirred at the noise and began to wander, relentlessly searching for the source of the voice. Further from the zonbies, in the field behind the trailers living on this street inside the park, two pearly white eyes opened with a start. A feral snarl rang from its mouth, and it stood, and walked.

Rowan was unaware of this, not capable of hearing the zombies starting to moan outside over the sobs that wracked her body. Her mother, the person who had taken care of her for her entire life, was dead...dead.

_And there's no way to bring her back I should've been here to protect you, mother...I should have stayed instead of going to that goddamn mall, stayed to protect you..._

She looked up. _And my sepfather...I..._

"...Ro-wan?" a shaky voice asked from nearby. Rowan shot up with a start, looking from one side of the trailer to the other. She wiped some tears from her eyes, enough so that she could see through them clearly. She recognized that voice...

"Daddoo?" she called out, using her old nickname for the stepfather she knew for five years of her life. The voice - where had it come from?

"...Row..."

The voice sounded strong to her left, to the master bedroom. A second after the call, she heard the click of a door unlocking or locking, and she took to the bedroom door, shoving it open to see her stepfather lying before her, covering his wounds with both hands. his eyes were half closed, and his cuts were extensive. The thick brown hair that was cropped atop of his head was matted with blood, and small streams of the substance were caked to his scalp and down his cheek. Light blue eyes stared on, but they were faded, afraid, and gave him an overall tired appearance. Through the small rays of moonlight that managed to penetrate the smoldering smoke outside as well as the window to the bedroom, she could see the scratches across his chest and arms - long, jagged marks, thick and made by sharp things. What could have those kinds of claws?

"Daddo...crap..._shit_...you're hurt..." Rowan leaned beside him, forcing him to pull of an arm that coated his chest. Removing it, she found more of those long scratches, bleeding slowly. the pool that formed around his body and stained the rug showed that he lost blood, too much. He won't make it, Rowan thought reluctantly.

Her stepfather, Roid, chuckled softly at her statement. "Apparently..." He looked down. "I tried to help her, Rowan... I-I tri-ied." His words broke off as he began to cough. He removed his hand from his mouth, but she could see the blood that came from his throat. "Kara attacked...I fended her off as...best I c-co_ooooo_uld." Another long hack. "She ...g-g-"

"_Shh_," Rowan silenced him with a finger to her mouth. "I know...I understand." _I think. How could I understand the mess that's fallen on this city? How can I understand the death of Victoria, of my mother, or that my stepfather's **dying** before me?_

"Damn cat came in, too...our pet, you know...H-he ch...chaaa..." He began to hack again. more blood clots fell onto his hand.

"Sphynx? He turned into something...?" Rowan finished for him.

Roid nodded.

"There was a dog outside that turned into something, too... It attacked me...i beat it up." She grinned at the sight of a smile on his face. "Listen...let's get you out of here. We can stop the bleeding-"

"No," Roid cut her off, his voice as firm although weak. "I sa...aw Calvin become...-" A cough. "-one of them... I'll change...too..."

"This isn't Night of the Living Dead!" she hissed. "You're bleeding, I'll fix you up-"

"_No_, Rowan."

"I lost Victoria, I lost Mom. I'll be _damned_ if I lose you, too!" her voice held more rebuke than she wanted but she stared at him with such a hard glare that he looked away.

But he didn't give up. "_God**damn it**_ Rowan, can't...you see? I'm...dying too..." Rowan made an attempt to cut him off, but he silenced her by speaking again. "I'll...slow you down...I can't breath as is...and...and..." He smiled. "The pain's...fading..."

"You can't leave, Daddoo... you can't leave me alone, please..._please_...," Rowan begged, tears falling from her eyes. Roid reached up to touch her cheek.

"You're strong...like your mother..." A cough. "She fought Kara...off like a ...beast." He smiled affectionately. "Just lie...she fought of that last...bastard husband...or her's."

"Daddoo...Please..."

"I love you...Rowan, you know that...?" He smiled. "Celia...begged me to help you... I couldn't. I failed." He coughed, his entire body shaking with this one. "Please...You have to...escape. Get out...of the city. Live you life...we beg of you..."

His eyes were closing. Rowan reached for his hand and clamped it tightly in her own. "Daddoo..."

"I love you...please..."

"I love you too, Daddoo...I do! Daddoo?" She watched in horror and fear as he stared at her, that smile still upon his face. His face was locked in that expression, eternally. "_Daddoo_!"

None of the moans and groans outside could break through the sound of cries that ensued.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

A few moments after Roid had died, his body convulsed, and he rose again. At first Rowan thought it was a miracle until he began to swipe at her, trying to claw her, to kill her, and then lunging forward to try to bite her. Shocked and angry at the fate that befell him, she put him down as quickly as possible, not wanting to see his body endure more suffering. Walking out, her mother also rose, and Rowan repeated the process.

The trailer park seemed to be filled with the groans and grunts of the undead as they smelt and heard live flesh. They were all shambling towards Rowan's trailer home and, as she exited, towards her. She was quick to walk past them, not wanting to be bothered with them or lose her chance of escaping the city in one piece. She would keep her promise...she had to.

Shuffling towards the exit of the trailer park, she didn't notice the pair of eyes that had been following her, nor the deadly beast that stalked quietly behind her until she heard a small, menacing growl and then a hiss of anger.

Rowan turned to come face to face with Sphynx, the orange and black tabby cat that lived with the family since its birth two years prior to today. but the creature that stood before her bore little to no resemblance to the house cat that she had stroked and fed, ad let fall asleep at the foot of her bed at night. Well...the only resemblance being the size.

Massive, jagged claws shot from its leathery and raw feet, the flesh of them exposed and the tips of the claws stained with red blood. The fur of its body was no longer the bright orange color it once was, nor did it cover much of the body because of the great tears in its skin and the falling pieces of rotting flesh, but was now a dim brown color as the crimson blood and the orange fur mixed. the black stripes Sphynx had been born with made him look like some small, bloodied tiger. The tail of the cat wavered dangerously behind him, lined with what looked to be spikes. Its eyes were a milky white, and its teeth had been elongated and sharpened, the two primary canines the length of the nose to the bottom of the top jaw.

And its temper was burning. Without hesitation, it lunged at her, aiming for her throat. Rowan was lucky enough to dodge when she did, for Sphynx, being the small cat he was and the talented hunter from the start, was quick on his feet as well. She lifted the crowbar up to defend herself as it leapt again, but as she brought the bar up, Sphynx's reflexes reacted as if he somehow knew the bar would block the cat from her chest and her face. At the last minute, the feline flung out his paw, raking his claws against her tender skin. Alarmed, Rowan jumped to the side, feeling her neck quickly to be sure it didn't break through the skin. No, she was safe...

That was an understatement. Sphynx didn't leap again, but this time ran for her legs, outstretching his claws to swipe at her flesh. When Rowan retracted and made to strike the feline with the crowbar she clutched in a death-grip in her hands, Sphynx jumped into the air again, this time at her eyes.

Rowan jumped back on impulse, bringing up the crowbar in defense. She felt the bar hit home on the side of the feline, and as soon as she saw the body lying on the ground, she pivoted on her heels and ran.

_Sometimes, it's better to take flight than fight..._

However, Sphynx was back on his four paws by the time Rowan made her way into the street. The next thing Rowan knew, something had latched onto the back of her New Jersey Devils jacket and was hissing vehemently. She didn't see the one sweet and playful house cat raise a jagged paw, pull it back, and strike for the back of her skull.

She did, however, hear two loud '**BANG**'s ring throughout the air, and she felt the feline that clung to her back yowl in shock - or was it pain? And although she still felt the weight of the cat on her back, it no longer moved. Desperate to get it off of her, she shook vigorously, and when that failed she slipped of the jacket and whipped it around. The limp figure of Sphynx flew into the air and landed some ten feet away from her, one hole embedded in its side, the other in its head.

_Bullet holes...?_

Blinking confusion, she turned her head to see who it was who had saved her skin, just as the person took a few steps forward and rose a hand to his face, asking in a somewhat shaky voice, "Are you alright?"

The person standing in front of her looked to be in his mid-forties, and the look on his face was contorted in an odd mixture of concern and fear. His hair, dark brown, was cut into a tall buzzcut, and his eyes were wide and whirling with various emotions, giving him an overall weary appearance. He wore a simple white t-shirt with a yellow vest covering it up, and green camo pants to go along with the outfit. On his left sleeve, she could make out writing, and as he drew closer, she felt both relief and fear when she saw the word S.T.A.R.S. written across the emblem that represented the R.P.D.

S.T.A.R.S....the very team that may have witnessed the first variation of what fell on the city. They were the team that put to an end the cannibal killings that occurred in June, three months ago, even if it meant the explosion of the old Spencers Estate in the Arklay Forest, and their exemption from the R.P.D. they were all suspended after what happened in June, according to the news. The media claimed that they were drunk, and that they blew up the mansion because they were intoxicated. Now, looking back, she seriously doubted it.

"Shooken...but yeah...," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. She blinked in surprise at the weakness in her voice, and shook her head softly. Rowan looked up. "Thanks...." She took a few steps forward, tilting her head, then smiling softly.

"I'm glad there's somebody alive in this city." They both blinked as they said this at the same time, and they chuckled.

Such was the meeting with the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team pilot, Brad Vickers.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

Rowan looked over for not the first time since the two had met up. they were making a trek back to the shed where Sarah and Kristin were hiding, hopefully waiting patiently for Rowan to return and not making an attempt to go out and find her. The moment Rowan informed him there were two other survivors as well as herself, Brad said he would follow her to their safe-haven and help them get out of this city turned into a war-zone. Still, there was an odd aura of this person, like a worry that wouldn't fade away, or a fear that was strong enough for others to pick up on it. She blinked and smiled wearily at him, feeling the first effects of fatigue now that she had relaxed enough to get a chance to feel it. Only two hours of sleep last night, nothing more. And it had been about two hours since she left the shed.

She sighed softly and looked up, wincing at the smell of acrid fumes from the smoke and fire that had engulfed so many houses in the few hours since the nightmare first began. The smell that was prominent over all of those things was death and decay, and that scent would never leave her mind.

"What happened to this place?" she found herself whispering. Brad looked over with a weak smile and then at the ground as they walked.

"I'm not really sure...," he said honestly. "It's a virus of sorts, I heard. My teammate-" there was an odd strain on his voice there. Guilt was clear in his tone. "-, she's still in the city."

"So you're trying to find her?" Rowan asked, hoping to make conversation to lift the dull cloud of depression and fright that smothered them.

"Yeah... She knows more about what's going on than I ever did. Her name's Jill Valentine."

Rowan rose a brow. "You're not the only S.T.A.R.S. members in the city, are you?" she asked, hope tingeing her voice.

"Unfortunately... Everybody else left for Europe."

Both of them paused when they heard a pair of nearby moans. They disregarded it, and Brad took the moment to make sure the Beretta he held was loaded before they continued on.

"It's wierd how everything worked out," he added, brushing one hand through his hair. "Just before she's about to head off to join them, this happens... It's like somebody was planning on trapping her here."

"Once we get to Kristin and Sarah, we'll do everything we can to help you look for her, promise." Rowan offered a light smile.

"It's too dangerous for you to travel the city," he began. Then another thought popped into his mind, and he lowered his head in defeat. "Then, it's too dangerous for you to stay in one spot either."

"We managed to make it out of the movies of Raccoon Mall last night," she replied with a light-hearted chuckle. "Weird thing is...there sounded to be some explosions. I just remembered that now..."

"I heard that a group was able to bomb away Main Street." At the confused look on Rowan's face, he grinned. "There were many more zombies flooding the streets last night then there are today. A lot of them piled onto Main Street for some reason... That's all I heard."

"Goodie, then we're not alone in this wierd city." Relief and hope crowded her mind once again. Something else fell into the back of her mind, about something Brad mentioned a moment or so ago. "You said your teammates went to Europe. You're going with them, right?"

Brad paused for a moment, and Rowan wondered if she touched a tender subject when he began to walk again and responded. "Don't think they'd want me with them. Long story-"

"_S.T.A.R.S._..."

"The hell?" Brad whispered. He froze in place, as did Rowan, and both stood in complete silence for a moment. The voice sounded nearby, but low and husky, like it came from something big. For a moment, there was not one noise.

Then the heavy footsteps came.

They both swung around in time to see something large coming directly towards them. Neither of them had time to react when it suddenly dashed and caught Brad by the neck, lifting him up and staring at him with a look of distorted satisfaction before throwing him aside. The trench-coated thing, whatever it was, turned and stalked towards the fallen one as Brad landed with a yelp of confusion. Rowan had to force herself from backing away, not only because of the sudden frightening appearance of this person, but the incredible height of him...well over six feet. But the stench of decay lingered with it, hanging in the air dominantly.

As it bent to lift Brad up again, Rowan found herself rushing forward, clutching the crowbar tightly in her hand. She drove it deep into the side of the beast, whatever it was, and heard it grunt in surprise and turn to face her as she yanked the bar out of the skin. There was no look of pain on its face...what was left of its face.

The street lamps showed her that the creature's lips seemed to have been ripped off, leaving instead a vile, unfaltering grin. The right eye was sewn over with skin and three or four metal clamps, but its left eyes, pale and white, narrowed in anger. The head of this creature was bald, and the skin around its face was brown and rotting. A large purple object that Rowan at first thought was a snake reached out of its shoulders and around the back of its neck. the left shoulder was exposed, and its huge hands were gloved, and its feet booted.

She had no time to jump back as one well aimed punch from the creature knocked her to the pavement. She struggled to her feet, expecting the beast to pick her up or kill her. She was shocked, however, to find it turning back towards Brad. It lifted him up from the ground, and Brad was shoving himself away from the arm of the beast, trying valiantly to break free.

"_S.T.A.R.S._," it hissed once again, and then threw the pilot once again, this time sending him into the side of the nearest building. The creature, something of a S.T.A.R.S. hunter, Rowan told herself, walked towards him again, and in its left palm she could see something trying to emerge from the skin. Fearing for Brad's life, she lunged again. Once again, it turned, it struck, and it followed after its initial target.

Her eyes didn't fail her this time. Out of its left palm, a thick, purple tendril emerged. Frantic, she turned to look at Brad, who stared at the S.T.A.R.S. hunter with great shock as he realized it would not leave them alone until it killed the one it wanted to hunt.

"Brad, the left hand! _Look out for the left hand_!"

As he struggled to his feet, he did look out - and he dodged just as the tendril shot forward from the hunter creature's hand. It implanted itself into the wall where Brad's head had been only a second before.

"Shit...Rowan, get out of here!"

"Are you kidding me?" Rowan shouted. She struck at the beast with her crowbar, and once again it struck at her, but this time Rowan was able to dodge its powerful fist.

Seeing the one vulnerability the beast seemed to have as it began to turn to face him again, Brad fired off his Beretta. Seven bullets struck the chest. Four hit the skull - but they didn't penetrate the muscle surrounding its bony scalp. the S.T.A.R.S. hunter turned its back toward Rowan, lifting its hand up to pummel the ex-S.T.A.R.S. pilot to the ground, and Rowan lunged once more, this time burying the crowbar into its back, missing the spine but making contact nonetheless. As she yanked it out, the thing brought its fist down and swung to strike her, but one well-aimed bullet from Brad penetrated the tendril around its neck.

A thick, violet ooze began to slide from the wound, dripping from the shoulder tentacle of the creature who stared on, puzzled. The hunter creature then looked down at its shoulder, as if realizing what had happened and knowing that it couldn't do a thing about it. A second later, it clutched at its shoulder and fell to the ground with a groan.

Brad stared down at the creature for such a long time that Rowan wondered if he was facing some mortal dilemma. When he looked up, his eyes were wide, and one look at them told Rowan what he was worried about. the creature was after S.T.A.R.S. members... He was in danger, and so was Jill. The creature at their feet grunted and moaned again, then began to twitch. Fearing it would wake from its state, they took to a run.

"Guess I can't go with you," Brad said as they stopped a minute later. both were panting for breath.

"You can't go _alone_!" Rowan protested, looking up in shock. "That'd be suicide!"

"I don't want to put you in danger either, or your friends..."

"We can help you..."

"Sorry, I can't." He said that in such a way that Rowan knew it would be useless to try and make him think otherwise. "Idea...Get your friends, and meet up at the R.P.D. Hopefully I'll find Jill before..." He trailed off.

Rowan sagged her shoulders, but she nodded. She was reluctant to lose a friend...to lose somebody else. "Fine...I will."

"I might arrive there tonight..." He looked up suddenly, and grinned weakly in slight humor. "But do yourself a favor. Go to Kendo's...Get yourself something other than a crowbar."

Rowan smirked softly. "I won't get to whack the beasties in the head?" she mock-whined, earning a small chuckle from Brad. But she nodded. "Gotcha... But remember what you said."

"I'll be there. Be careful, though."

"You too," Rowan responded sternly, although with a smile. "Come back safe and sound, y'know."

Brad nodded. They stood in silence for a moment, and with a nod, they both turned to head off in the opposite direction of the other - Brad to find a comrade who was just as in much danger as he was, and Rowan to find her friends and lead them safely to the R.P.D.

As she continued to walk and caught sight of the house whose backyard held their safe-haven, she heard a roar in the distance, one that was all too familiar. Silently, she wished him luck as she headed to the sanctuary.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee**

W00t! Chapter 3 is finally done and over with! Meh, I fgured that I would change the way everything went one in the original story, so expect some dilemmas, dramas, and much, much more over time. Thanks for all of the reviews, and nah, i don't intend on giving her a boyfriend here, sowwy. -

Next chapter up sometime next month. -


	4. Goin' Shopping

**Raccoon City : Demon's Gate  
**_Chapter 4_

Author's Notes: Before I get started, let me just apologize for not updating when I promised. Unfortunately life seems to call us back to the world when we're diving into fantasy... Anyhoo...

JoJo10 - Ehm...I think you'll be surprised. Brad, um... Well, you'll see. wink, nudge

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

_2:24 A.M.  
__Back at the shelter-shed._

Rowan wasn't really surprised at what was waiting for her when she returned to the shanty little shed that they claimed and a safe haven. Her departure didn't gone unnoticed, especially since about two hours had passed since she left the place barred from the inside. Kristin was standing outside of the shed doors, which were propped open by the lonely figure of Sarah sitting against it. Both were holding melee weapons - Kristin clutched an axe, and Sarah held onto a sledgehammer. As she drew near, Rowan not only noticed the anger and worry contorting their faces and consuming their eyes, but also the heavy coats of crimson that colored their weapons. Before them were three limp bodies of what had once been humans. About ten feet further from where the three bodies lay in a heap, there was another...with its head severed from its neck and lying at its side.

"Nice aim," Rowan murmured to herself, grinning half-heartily at them. Her grin was met by fierce-looking scowls.

So, when she was in hearing range of them, she was berated with angry words like "What were you thinking?", "We were worried!", "Where the hell did you go?"

They also grew suspicious when they noticed that, when the note Rowan left behind said she headed off to get food, her hands were empty save for the crowbar hanging limply in her hand. Although Rowan was deathly tired, exhausted to the bone with both grief, anxiety, and lack of sleep, they pushed questions onto her, wondering where she went, what she did, and so on. So Rowan told them what happened in the time she left to the time she came back, and when she finished, there was an eerie silence in the wake.

"There's survivors?" Sarah whispered hopefully, her eyes lighting up in an instant. "Cops?"

Kristin, hearing the last word, suddenly slapped her head. "Oh...How stupid were we? We should've gone to the R.P.D.! Cops, guns...squad cars! We could have had them go and pick up our..."

She glanced at Rowan as she spoke, and immediately her mouth closed.

But Rowan shook her head, although she felt her heart sink lower. If they had gone to the R.P.D. instead of this damn shed... or if they had run off to their homes in an effort to warn their families, maybe...

"I told Brad we'd meet him at the R.P.D. and we'd be there either today, or early tomorrow. After all...we do need to get some supplies and stuff in our stomach's until we go anywhere." She stared down at the bloody crowbar in her hands. "And better weapons."

Sarah began to grin and stand up, but Kristin held out her hand. Clapping Rowan firmly on the shoulder, she turned her towards the shed. "Later. You sleep. You look like the walking dead."

At that remark, Sarah and Rowan both shot her looks, and she lowered her head upon realizing what she said. Rowan sighed, turning towards and walking into the shed. Sarah and Kristin followed behind her, closing the door as Rowan took a seat on the ground against the wall, leaning her head back against the metallic siding. She was barely aware of somebody resting their head against her lap when she succumbed to drowsiness and welcomed darkness.

Of course, the darkness that was sleep quickly stained scarlet. Even in dreams there was no relief from the torment she and the others had endured. There was no escaping that dagger of reality that kept twisting into her mind. Rowan's last vision in her dreams that were falling quickly to nightmares was that of her mother, blood-stained and torn, rising from the ground, opening her mouth in an unearthly groan. That groan turned into a screech as she suddenly flew forward, arms lashing out.

In a second, that scream became Rowan's as she jolted forward with a start, covered in head to toe with sweat. Kristin, sitting near the double door of the shed, jumped in shock and fear, while Sarah, curled up like a cat beside Rowan with her head resting upon her lap, shot awake the moment Rowan uttered that shriek from her mouth. Sarah's voice joined Rowan's, and the latter stopped, staring blankly at the younger black-haired girl who backed against the wall of the shed in sudden fear. The cold sweat that dampened her face told Rowan that she was not alone in having a nightmare. Apparently, she woke Sarah up with her own scream before the latter could wake her up with one of her own.

One glance to her side also told Rowan that Kristin had didn't gain a wink of sleep. In the few hours that had passed while Sarah and Rowan dozed, her eyes seemed to sink, her white eyes standing out against the miniscule circles forming beneath her eyes. Rowan gave a little grimace as Sarah's nonstop shriek of terror continued, and a brisk nudge in the ribs from her made the other girl stop her ear-splitting yell.

"Christ, Sarah, you sound a banshee," Kristin murmured in a low voice. Now Rowan also noted that the corners of her eyes were wet, and the whites were slightly red.

_Crying._

Rowan rose a brow at her, inching forward slightly on all fours. She blinked at Kristin. "You alright?" she asked, vaguely aware that Sarah, embarrassed by the comment towards her cry, was trying to compose herself, brushing her shirt and whatnot.

Kristin shrugged. "Yeah," she replied. "Just...I guess it takes a while for this all to sink in..."

Sarah snickered from behind. "Especially something like this; something that sounds like it came straight from a post-apocalyptic movie..." The smile faded away at the disturbed look on Rowan's and Kristin's faces, and then a worried look came to her face. "You don...don't think Raccoon's the only place affected, do you?" Her voice was slightly slurred, as she had just woken up.

Rubbing at her eyes and the moisture forming in the corners courtesy of her dream, Rowan shrugged her shoulders, letting them sag. "Doubt it... Something this bad... But, if we are the only place, help should be coming soon."

"If there's anybody left to call outside forces," she heard Kristin whisper under her breath.

Sarah shifted uncomfortably and Rowan sat up straight, yawning and stretching her arms and then standing. She glanced around, looking down at her belly and wincing a little at the grumble that came from within. Running like they had yesterday and going on that very early morning expedition had used a lot of energy. Occasionally rumbles and moans coming from the other two's bellies told her that she wasn't the only one hungry. Briefly Rowan cursed at herself from within her mind, silently wishing she had also made a run to a grocery store or something before heading back to the shed. Who could tell how long they would have to stay at this shelter?

Or move to another one? That was another thought... Imagine an entire mob of the undead making their way to the shed and assaulting the fragile walls of it with pounding fists anxious to reach food. How long would this shed hold in case of that? And how long would it be until one of them got sick because they didn't have much of blankets, heat, or anything to keep them dry, what with the coming of winter and the frost that formed over the late night hours?

"We'll have to head to the R.P.D. soon," Sarah spoke up, and Rowan wondered idly if she had read her mind. "We can't stay in a crappy little shed all the time."

"We need to get some food, too," Rowan added.

Kristin nodded at each of their suggestions, looking towards them. "The nearest place is that Shop 'n Bag about four blocks away. We can worry about weaponry later - the cops would be able to protect us anyway when we go there...hopefully tonight?" She threw an inquiring look at each of them.

Sarah shrugged. "Sounds good to me. Food first, I'm hungry."

"You always are," Kristin added with a hint of a laugh. The corners of her lips pulled upwards just so.

Rowan rubbed the back of her scalp absent-mindedly, then looked to the two. There was the tiniest glimpse of a smile upon her features, but it faded quickly. Somewhere within she did have a sense of humor that wanted to be released, especially with such a dismal atmosphere, if only for the sake of cheering up the other two. "Food it is, then... Cash or credit card?"

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

_5:28 A.M._

Navigating through the streets was actually relatively easy compared to stalking through the trailer park with the moon neglecting to shine upon it with all of the smoke. The area they were in was surprisingly fire-free, although they could see the faint embers of distant flames far away. And they were not in complete darkness, for dawn was just beginning to arrive, the sun peeking above the horizon and firing rays of light that managed to lighten the cloud of smoke above them. Even if they were in an area where there were no flames, the smoke from other collected as one large canopy over the city.

Still, they couldn't shake that eerie feeling of impending doom and something of a ragnarok in which they couldn't help. They were poorly armed as it was, and couldn't rush to help the sounds of the odd scream penetrating the dawn air - for most of them were far from where they were. They made a few attempts to run to aid the ones that were closer, but almost every single time the victim was pushed to the ground between the time he or she screamed and the time the three children arrived, and were devoured. Almost meaning that there was only one that wasn't being eaten when they arrived. There was one man they saw limping away from a group of two zombies, bites marking his upper arms and ankle. When he looked up to see Kristin, Rowan, and Sarah, he stared blankly and froze where he was, and rose the gun he had in his hand towards his head.

So their numbers were still to three by the time they stood in front of the small grocery center. The fear of losing one of their group caught onto them when they saw the state of the shopping area, and all three held back for a long moment, their hands tightly grasping their melee weapons, their faces pale and anxious with uncertainty.

The store wasn't exactly a very large one, nor very popular. It was merely there for all who were too lazy to drive or walk all the way to the Shop Rite about fifteen minutes away. However, even if it was small, it attracted enough customers to keep it running. the entire shop stood around fifteen feet, and it was wide enough and long enough to accommodate everything the modern store had. But now...the shape it was in gave the feeling that everything inside it was putrid and spoiled and rotting, just like that ominous scent that drifted from it.

The windows were broken in numerous places...well, those windows that weren't shattered to the point where they no longer existed. There were deep, circular embeddings in the concrete walls, each the size and shape of a bullet, and the one thing that gave the hope away of there being somebody within the store that was armed was the fact that there was a body near the door, a gun held loosely in his right hand, the scarlet liquid seeping from his skull where another hole similar to those in the wall marked it. Something probably a little more disconcerting was the fact that there were stains of crimson stretched across the wall, leading both to where the body was and going inside and out, like the zombies that sauntered here could not hold themselves up straight enough and had to lean on something in order to continue on their hunt for food.

None of the three girls moved at first, and none of them seemed to even breath at the sight before them. Would it be safe to enter something looking so ominous, something that seemed like a gate leading into the very depths of Hell?

After about five minutes past, still none of them moved. Then Rowan stepped forward with her hands raised in the air, the crowbar glinting in what little sunlight managed to peek through the broiling clouds of smoke in this part of town. She moved forward, slowly and hesitatingly. Only when Sarah joined her side with the sledgehammer lifted in an offensive manner did Kristin join them with her axe. After briefly checking to see if the gun was loaded only to find it empty, they moved inside quickly and quietly, as if hoping that, if they should meet something within, they would be able to scamper past it and right back out the door.

Inside was no better than outside. Here and there were spatters of blood on the floors, the shelves, and the cans and other food items near them. At the cash registers nearby, there were one or two mauled-looking bodies slumped over. They would have thought them dead if they didn't twitch every so often. More bodies littered the floors, some completely blown away, with proof lying in the holes in their heads, if they had any, while others lay with bites upon their bodies and no signs of final death on them. These Rowan, Kristin, and Sarah avoided as best as possible.

Then again, it's not always possible to step around a corpse that is 'alive' enough to hunger for fresh blood. One lashed out in an instant after Rowan passed it, its arm latching strongly on her ankle, its creamy eyes gazing at it hungrily. Before the wretched moan could emanate from its mouth, Kristin's axe met its skull and it was no more.

But the moan alerted the others. The two cashiers were standing with a start, attempting to move forward but finding it difficult with the obstacle of the cash registers and the wooden boards surrounding them, preventing them from moving anywhere but around their cubicle unless they had the intelligence enough to open the wooden boards' doors...and they seemed to lack intelligence. The ones that were not destroyed and on the ground began to either stand or drag themselves along the linoleum floor, groaning hungrily.

And, to the girls' utter horror and fear, more of the noises sounded from outside. Apparently they had better hearing than was thought.

"Ah-shit!" Sarah hissed. "_Shit_! They're waking up!"

"And more are coming!" Kristin half-shouted, jumping from one foot to the other while jerking the axe out of the skull with a sharp tug. "We need to get out of here!"

"And starve to death?" Rowan asked with more vehemence than she wanted. "C'mon...grab what you can!"

As Rowan made to run for one of the hangers holding the plastic bags, Sarah shot her a look of disbelief. Kristin simply stared open mouthed.

"Are you insa-" Sarah began angrily.

"Do you want to get out of this damned city or not?" Rowan hissed, the tension seeming to change her attitude rather quickly. She thrust one bag to each of them as she came back, keeping one for her own and beginning to run down the nearest aisle, hastily dodging the waking zombie that began to stand and lunge at the front of the aisle.

As Sarah stared blankly after her, Kristin nodded and began to run past the same zombie, towards the place of dry food. "Shit... Grab what you can!"

"Make sure it doesn't have to be cooked!" Rowan called. She was running out of the aisle shoving a box of trail mix into her bag.

Sarah blinked, but she followed. She made to run past the same zombie the other two evaded, but paused after passing it, She swung around just as it did, stuck out her foot and kicked sharply at its knee. It lost its balance and fell, and the young black-haired girl made a dash for the aisle the farthest from the doors, anxious to get out of sight from the horde of tens that made their way from the streets and to the shattered windows of the market.

She shrieked.

Rowan was the first to respond to that. Alarmed, the thirteen-year-old ran for the source of Sarah's voice, and was alarmed to find about five zombies lurching for her. Sarah was waving her sledgehammer around frantically, missing most of them in her blind panic. "Sarah!"

Rowan ran to her, waving her crowbar wildly in hopes of hitting them. The sharp edge of the metal bar met the skin of two of them, making them swing around to meet her. A second swing of the bar brought one down as it buried itself into the hard skull of it, but the other that turned around was now reaching its arms out enough so that its fingers grazed her-

-and then it, too, fell as the head fell from the shoulder with one fatal swipe from Kristin's axe. She stood beside Rowan now, and the two of them both rushed to meet the crowd of three zombies.

Sarah, in the meanwhile, wasn't as offensive as they were. In her fear she had dropped the sledgehammer, and seeing her fault she made to reach for it and was immediately lunged at by the nearest undead. Noticing the futility of her actions, she groped the shelves for anything hard. A can's surface met her fingertips, and she brought it across the forehead of the beast before her. It stumbled backward and fell, attempting to stand again, and Sarah began to stomp on its head in a determined demeanor.

She held up the can for a moment, raising a brow.

"String beans," she murmured, and giving a frown of disgust lobbed it at the second closest zombie, a female with the skin of her neck flapping loosely.

It groaned in surprise and also fell to the ground, and before it could get back up Sarah swept her arm through the shelf and sent the cans flying down onto the body. Buried under the metal, it struggled before it stood in the midst of the aluminum cans.

From ahead of her Kristin let out a bark of laughter. "Now i _that's_ /i using your resources!"

Experimentally, Kristin snatched up something from the shelf - a can of peas - and threw it at the last zombie. Also surprised, it fell just as Sarah snatched up her hammer and slugged the one she knocked over with it.

The sound of breaking glass and shards of the substance rubbing against the hard floor alerted them to the presence of the fifteen or so stumbling in from outside. The next few moments came in a rush - the three scrambled from where they were and, sticking together like a loosely organized pack, grabbed at whatever box of dry food and package of un-cookable substances came in their path. By the time the all emerged from the aisles, their full bags were hanging from their once free hands.

And there was an army of undead waiting for them.

"Ah...fucking Hell," Kristin hissed. Rowan rose a brow - that was the first she ever heard her say the f-word.

"Uhm...," Sarah began, and trailed off. Her face was worried as the horde drew nearer.

Giving a shrug, Rowan rose her crowbar. "Alrighty then, women! **_Charge_**!"

They charged.

What happened next could have been the equivalent of a bomb exploding, or something like that, for there were bodies of the undead husks of the humans flying through the air as a sledgehammer slammed into their chest, or a head or a limb flying free into the air as an axe made its sweep, or just the confused groans as a sharp smack from a crowbar made them fall. About seven fell before there was a clearing in the horde large enough for the three to run through. Shoving through the restless and hungry dead with what force they could muster, they found their feet and took to a run, each holding a bag and a weapon, and with Kristin holding her infamous purse.

Behind them, the once-living corpses of zombies moaned hungrily as they wandered the super-market, some heading to chase after the three only to return to feast on the unanimated corpses inside.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

Sarah hadn't been able to stop laughing for the first few minutes after the raid on the market. There were fresh tears rolling down her face, but not from sadness or weakness. Kristin was grinning madly, Rowan was shaking her head from side to side, not capable of mustering up a chuckle but smiling softly, her eyes still marred with that odd weariness within.

Not until Kristin slapped Sarah hard on the back did the black-haired girl silence herself, coughing instead. Then it was Kristin's turn to laugh. Rowan made no sound, despite the odd glee and release from tension around her. There was something clinging and engulfing her heart that she couldn't seem to rid herself of, and although the antics of her friends lightened her spirits just a tad, she couldn't seem to get up.

Surprisingly, Sarah was the first to notice her demoralized state and, ignoring the now-in-stitches Kristin, walked up to the brunette, one hand raised tentatively before resting on her back.

"No worries," she whispered meekly, smiling. The corner of Rowan's mouth twitched upward as Sarah lifted her grocery bag into the air. "And 'sides, I snagged some Swedish Fish. I know you love 'em." To prove herself, she lifted the package out of the bag after rummaging through it, tossing it sideways to Rowan.

The 13-year-old caught it quickly, looked down at it, and found her stomach churning at the red coloration of the candy fish. She shoved it in her jacket pocket, not capable of looking at the red gummies - they looked more like a deep crimson to her eyes.

Sarah sadly smiled back at her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a little hug with it. "Anyways, we're almost to the shed."

"Crappy little shed," Rowan murmured under her breath. The light uplift of her lips now turned into a weak little smirk. "Can't wait to find a better place to hide out..."

"Maybe in a ma-" Sarah paused as she realized what she was saying. She shook her head after throwing off an apologetic look, but fell silent, incapable of finding anything else to say.

Luckily, Kristin wasn't so muted. She pulled herself out of her hysteria to break the silence with a hiss and a point ahead of them, where two shadowy figures were stumbling forth from an alleyway. Apparently, they were heard - and the appearance of those two sickly specters made Rowan's heart sink lower and tremble. She couldn't hide the thought that they were no different from them once upon a time.

Alerted by Kristin's warning, Sarah shot a look back, now only aware of four more heading in their direction from behind, two with their jaws literally hanging like they broke off of a hinge, and the other two with bodies so ragged and torn. Only now their desperate moans broke through the moment of triumph engulfing the group.

"Can we take them?" Kristin asked. She tried to lift her axe, struggling to support its weight with a full hand.

Rowan shook her head. "Can't. We're loaded." She indicated the bags they held.

Sarah looked from one group of zombies to the other. "Well...we can just walk past them," she pointed out. "They're too slow to worry abou-"

A sharp bark from the left contradicted her cut-off statement. As Kristin mouthed a, "What the Hell?", another sounded in response to hound nearby, this one behind them somewhere to the right. And then a third.

Rowan's eyes widened. She was shouting as quickly as she took to a run. "Run! Dogs!"

"Dogs?" came the older of the group's response, the large dark-brown haired girl running after her. She didn't need to ask - Rowan mentioned them once she returned to the shed after her excursion to the trailer park. Hounds infected by whatever it was that attacked the humans, now becoming quite cannibalistic and as flesh-hungry as their human counterparts. And unaffected by pain.

They breezed towards the two undead humans before them, then were past them just as three limber figures exited various hiding spots behind them - three dog-beasts that now caught sight of running meat and took the invitation, charging after them, drool dripping from their jaws and down their chins as loud and hungry snarls erupted from their throats.

The surviving trio hardly make it past half the block when Sarah gave a yelp as one of them was suddenly in the air beside her, leaping for her and missing by a scanty few inches. Kristin's nerves as another jumped at them kicked in, and she swung around waving the only thing she could really use as a weapon in the air - the shopping back filled with cans and boxes. The metal within the bag enabled it to strike the side of the beast just as it made to lunge again after landing.

With a yelp of surprise, the dog was flung to the side of the street while the bag split open and spilled cans all over the street. There was a brief flash of disbelief on Kristin's face as the bag emptied, but once Rowan shouted, "Forget it!" to her, she dropped the plastic baggie and kept running.

The dog that was struck didn't stay down. It stood, growled, and ran after them again, and it seemed this time with more speed as rage fueled it. The other two picked up on it...they became faster, too.

"Can't shake 'em!" Sarah shouted Another leapt, its jaws wide, its dull-clawed paws reaching out...

Rowan was quick to defend, crowbar lifted into the air and she swung at the beast. But it was too late. As the dug was flung back by a chance strike at the neck's spinal cord, there was a small trickle of red making its way down Sarah's shoulder, and a hiss of pain issuing from her mouth.

In the instant they slowed to fight, the other two gained up. The air was suddenly full of two hounds wanting to take a bite out of flesh. Kristin aimed with her axe, pulling back and swinging with plenty of power, being lucky enough to catch one in the front leg, slicing through bone and tendon. It fell with the stub of its front leg bleeding, and Rowan could clearly make out the surprised look on her friend's face. The dead weren't supposed to bleed...

Unless...

She was pushed to the ground suddenly. The last dog leapt straight at her, barreling into her chest. The bag she held fell from her grasp as she was pushed to the ground. There were jaws and a snarling, feral face just before her own. Its paws pressed against her, not breaking the skin but feeling like it would. It lowered its jaw, growling and snarling, closer to her neck, and desperately Rowan tried to hold it back from her.

There was a splatter of deathly looking blood, a yelp from the creature, and it fell. Sarah slowly picked up the sledge resting on its back, and after shooting her a look of gratitude Rowan wiped away the blood splattered on her face with great distaste, careful not to get it by her mouth or eyes.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...**

Without any wound cleaning solutions nearby, there was nothing more they could do for Sarah's scratched arm than to bandage it up with a piece of Kristin's blue sweater. They had to worry now about the scent of blood that would emanate from the wounded girl, and to Rowan, how long it would take before...it happened.

It didn't take long for her to guess that a single bite from one of these creatures, or even a scratch, could lead to infection. She saw it from her stepfather, healthy as a horse before and suffering after a few scratches from their old infected cat. Now she saw and understood why whatever happened to the city spread like wildfire, why there were so few survivors, and why, now, she should fear Sarah's wellbeing. She wondered if she should tell them...but from the look of downcast on the two girl's faces, they seemed to be coming to the same conclusion.

Desperate to lift the faces just a little, even when her's was so down, she walked to Sarah and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Kristin took up the other side. With a nod to one another they walked on, two holding grocery bags now, all armed with melees.

There was silence as they headed back to the shed they called shelter, broken occasionally by Sarah's comments and jokes and old conversations started by them of things of old, and what they would do once they got out of the city. Despite the scratch on her shoulder, Sarah was smiling, and Rowan forced one upon herself.

They didn't notice that ominous-looking manhole cover, the deep scratches of claws that seemed to be able to rip through metal apparently formed from the other side of the cover leading into the sewers. They didn't catch a glimpse at any of these things by trying to avoid thinking about anything related until it was too late.

Sarah was the only one to step on the manhole cover, with the others on either side. And the moment she did, the added weight of a sledgehammer and a grocery back to her own body mass made the metal beneath her feet crack and snap. Surprised by the sudden movement and not having quick enough reflexes, Rowan and Kristin lost their grip of her shoulders and were too late to try and pull her back up.

There was a splash, a groan and then a string of curses. In the faint gleam of the sun trying vainly to poke through the clouds, they could see Sarah trying to stand in the murky water she fell in, the look of absolute disgust on her face striking a humorous cord in Rowan and Kristin. The bag lay beside Sarah in the sewage, the sledgehammer beside it, and as the fallen girl looked down at the items it was clear she wasn't going to be picking it up any time soon.

"Blegh!" came her disgusted voice as she tried to wipe the slime off of her skin. "God-fucking-damn it to Hell!" A snicker came from Kristin, and Sarah glared at her from below. "You wanna come down here?"

Rowan managed a chuckle and inched closer to the broke manhole. "No, but we'll get out outta there." She reached an arm down.

Giving a 'humph' and something of a growl, Sarah sloshed through the sewage that went up to her ankles, her grimace priceless.

As the sewer-child started to reach an arm up, she froze. So did Rowan and Kristin. There was the sound of rushing water...dim, but steadily growing. As if something were _moving_ down there. Alarmed, both of the girls above ground now had their hands reaching into the sewer, desperate to get Sarah out of there.

"Sarah, c'mon!" Kristin hissed. The femme beneath them nodded and tried to jump for their outstretched hands that wouldn't grasp her's.

They didn't really know what happened at first. First Sarah was there, taking a leap of faith towards their palms. Then there was a flash of scales and the slime coating it, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the sewers.

And Sarah was gone.

**...Ba-bump...Ba-bump...Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep...**

Sorry I took so long, guys. Won't happen again, I hope...

Next chapter will be being worked on next weekend and the one after that. It'll probably be done int two/three weeks, if luck allows.

Meh...


	5. The Broken and the Deimos

**Raccoon City : Demon's Gate**

**Chapter 5**

* * *

For a long time, Rowan and Kristin simply stood at the edge of the manhole, peering into the darkness that it opened to in vain hopes of finding their friend standing unharmed at the other end. But there was nobody there, and there was no trace of her...save the for splatter of crimson on the cement ledges on either side of the sewer, and the lone trickle of red flowing along with the stream of dirty water, all of which was lit by the light of a fire outside.

Despite the danger lurking down below, neither remaining girl wanted to believe the fact that their group of three had been cut down to two. Neither wanted to believe that they were without one of their own, who was taken away from them by the jaws of some ferocious creature that lurked in the murky waters beneath them.

And for all they knew, it was waiting for _them_ to enter... Waiting for the moment to taste more fresh blood and flesh if it wasn't sated by the meal it just had.

But Rowan and Kristin had seen too much carnage, and were willing to risk themselves to be sure it didn't happen again. They clung to the fact that maybe Sarah had jumped out of the way, or got dragged within the sewers by the beast and then released from its death grip. Maybe she was huddled somewhere, wounded, or frightened, and too afraid to get up. In any case, they were going to find out - even if it meant that they would be chomped next.

They jumped into the sewers feet first, of course, with Rowan leading the way and Kristin heading in next after given the signal that all way clear. Once their feet touched the water, their faces screwed up a little at the stench of the place. Vaguely Rowan wondered how the manhole kept the reek from entering the streets... But then, the scent here was not just human waste. The overpowering smell was that of decay and blood, not strong enough to show there was something nearby, but fact enough that there were more of those undead fiends waiting in the dark.

All the more reason to find Sarah.

But they couldn't.

They searched like children looking for a treasure in a sandbox, although they were looking for more than treasure in something more than a sandbox. Yet, as noted before, the only thing they found that even pointed out that Sarah was once in existence here was the splatter of crimson. That, and the broken glasses half submerged in the murky water, and the grocery bag she held broken and ripped open with its contents lying in the liquid.

They made a shot at calling out her name, even daring to wander into the darkness that wasn't lit by the dim flame-emitted lights allowed passage by the broken manhole cover, only to dart back into the lit portion for fear of walking, unknowing, into the arms of something hungry for flesh. Although they could hear no moans, the stench of decay grew ever more stronger.

They called for what seemed an hour, desperation tingeing their voices. But there was no response. Maybe Sarah was just too weak to answer the call? But then, without her glasses to enable better vision, without a light to guide her way, and with cuts over the girl's body that would undoubtedly lead the undead stragglers to her, maybe she was...

Rowan shook her head to rid herself of the thought. Either way, they had no flashlight, and venturing further into the dark would be suicide, because they didn't know what lay behind it. So they couldn't go any further.

Yet the two continued to scream for Sarah to follow the light shining down on them by the manhole, however dim. The two stopped short, however, when the stench again drew closer, the smell of rotten meat signifying something wascoming. And then they heard the sloshing of water nearby, and a low moan...

In unison, both headed for the manhole, Kristin boosting Rowan up first before the brunette reached down to yank Kristin (which was a hard feat, seeing as Kristin was somewhat overweight. Rowan was being led by pure adrenaline now.) up and out the hole in the ground. As soon as the sweater-clad Kristin had her ankles past the hole's boundary, the torn and broken figure of a lonesome undead wandered into the lit portion of the sewers. It was a male, his lower jaw ripped off crudely and exposing a flopping tongue, his left leg ripped with numerous gashes that were made by something inhuman. That rose chills in both Rowan and Kristin.

What could there be that was possibly worse than a giant lizard in the sewers that seemed to come from urban legends, from the zombies and rotted dogs in the streets?

The zombie glanced around mindlessly, searching for the source of the scent of blood. Its sightless eyes rose and found the figure of Kristin scrambling through the manhole, and Rowan could see, through the dark, its nose working, twitching at the scent of blood. It rose its arms and moaned out that pitiful call, trying to reach for her but unable to. A moment later, his chorus was joined by three more. Two in the sewer tunnels-

and one behind the two girls.

In an instant, they were standing and running, Kristin swinging around her purse so that it smashed the zombified woman behind them in the cheek, knocking her off balance for a moment that would be their escape. They took to a run, stopping a few minutes later when they were out of reach to catch their breath, with Kristin breathing haggardly, her face flushed red.

And then they headed to the only shelter they knew. The one the three of them shared. But now, the three was cut down to two.

Above them, the sun was rising, its first rays of light striking vainly through the fire-induced smoke coating the entire city of Raccoon. But even the center of the solar system could not break the gloom.

Dawn rose.

* * *

The moment the two got back to the shed, its walls now covered with the blood of the torn hands of those undead that tried to get in when they were gone, and old handprints of those that attempted to break in when it was inhabited, both plopped onto the ground inside, curling up in little balls and huddling up side by side to gain warmth. After all, autumn was coming, and the wind was growing steadily bitterer. Even with Rowan's jacket on and Kristin wearing her sweatshirt, the wind still made them shiver. Even more so now because the wind held the acrid scent of fumed and smoke, and of course blood and rot.

Their weapons clanked on the cement flooring beside them, each coated with fresh blood, even when their victims appeared to be more dead than alive. They ad met their share of zombies coming back, and managed to run from one or two dogs that appeared from the alleyways or behind trash cans and the like. When the entered the yard holding the shed, they met another one...but there was no point in fighting it. The woman who was in the upper floor of the house whose property the shed sat upon became one of the creatures, and in the process of slamming into the window to get outside, since it didn't seem to have the mental capacity anymore, or the sense, to go down the stairs and use the door, the window shattered and the woman fell two stories to the ground. Her legs broken, and when Rowan and Kristin approached, she could do little more than claw towards them.

In any case, neither said a word for the first few moments. After a couple of minutes, Rowan sighed and leaned against her friend's shoulder, her look distressed and despair-ridden. Kristin looked in no better shape. She merely closed her eyes, and as Rowan began to drift off, she felt Kristin shake with a silent sob. Rowan would have cried too...but she didn't think she would be able to. After seeing her stepfather die before her, her mother, un-alive, rise to try and bite her, Victoria attack a zombie to save Rowan at the cost of her own life, Sarah swept away from something resembling, in their brief vision of it, a monster crocodile, and the whole mall of Raccoon overrun, as well as the entire city, she found it hard to show her emotions in tears. They just wouldn't come out. All the better. If she started to cry, she feared that her grip on willing to live would loosen, and she'd end her own existence.

But Kristin's silent crying broke her heart a little more. She cracked one eye open to look at the girl with tears streaming from the corners of her eyes and said, in a voice that broke as she spoke, "We'll leave soon, Kris... We'll get the hell out of this place."

"Sarah didn't," Kristin was quick to shoot back. Her voice was snappy, angry, and broken. "Vic d-didn't either... Or my family..."

"You parents might be alright still," Rowan began, alarmed at the last bit. They had yet to go searching for her family, because they lived on the opposite end of Raccoon City.

Kristin broke her off by raising her hand in the air. Within it was a sleek cell phone, splotches of red fingerprints dotting on side, blurred to show somebody tried to wipe it off. Rowan blinked, awed. "Where did you...?"

"One of...of the people... When you w-went to find your p...arents, and Sarah and I got assaulted by zombies while you were gone...one had this in his hand." She sniffed. "H-He didn't let it go even as one of...of _them_."

"You called your parents?"

"Sarah did too... No response. At least from Sarah's family... For me...the call w-went through. They t-talked to me... But...they..."

She fell silent. Rowan didn't have to guess what happened during the brief phone call, but what could she do? Say everything was going to be okay, that they'd all make it out? Well, she already did before. But that didn't make her feel certain. For all Rowan knew, they would die in the next thirty seconds.

She let a moment pass before asking softly, "Does the phone still work?"

"No. Line went dead. All of them..." She pointed to the door. "Out there...across the street... is a payphone. I t-tried again, but... There was nothing. No dial tone. No operator message. Just quiet."

Rowan winced. They're only other hope of getting in contact with somebody, other than roaming out into the streets to find survivors and meeting Brad Vickers, was a phone. And that was cut off. Everything, every line, every television, and so on, seemed to die along with the city. Maybe nobody was alive to operate the phones in Raccoon. Or maybe something happened to the main lines, and they got knocked down or burned or something.

But dread formed a knot in her stomach. Everything that happened - the infection of whatever made the once living now undead, the death of the phone lines, and the police precinct being one of the first things overrun - all seemed so...organized. Like somebody had planned it. Vaguely Rowan wondered if soon there would be a S.W.A.T. team entering the death city to rescue people. But without phones to contact them, and probably nobody getting out of the city alive to get help, she doubted it. Unless somebody called for help the first moment everything began...

That was only a day ago. It felt like a week.

_Time flies when you're having fun,_ she thought bitterly.

"What...d-do we do?" Kristin asked, looking down at Rowan with confused sadness. For not for the first time, Rowan felt like she was being burdened with the weight of playing leader, and she didn't like it. But she would do all she could. She would make sure that at least Kristin and she got out of the city alive, even though she failed miserably in helping Sarah, Victoria, and even her parents.

"We sleep," she whispered in reply. "We'll leave soon...Maybe a couple of hours. And head to the R.P.D. Brad said he'd meet us there, and I've no reason to believe he won't keep to his word." _Unless the beast that hunted him got him and his teammate..._ She winced. "Before we go, we stock up, though. Head to Kendo's or something to get firepower."

"None of us handled a gone before," Kristin whispered, closing her eyes again.

"We can learn."

Kristin sighed and leaned against Rowan's head resting on her shoulder. She didn't speak for a minute, then whispered in a tired voice, "I need a shower."

"You and me both," Rowan replied, the faintest hint of a weak smile on her features.

She closed her eyes and two minutes after Kristin started to snore, she was asleep.

* * *

They were jostled awake once or twice by the hammering of fists against the shed, or the scraping and slams along the bottom of the outside of the shed from the broken-legged zombie outside. Despite the danger without, they tried to ignore it within and kept on trying to get at least some rest.

In the end, each gained about a half hour of rest. Rowan's fears of dying in the midst of chaos now combined with the fear of falling asleep while walking outside, if that was possible. Her desperate need for weaponry to fend off the beasts out there combined with the desperate need for caffeine. From the rough look of Kristin, she could see she needed the same.

Rowan gave a groan as another fist pounded against the wall, accompanied by the low moan of the hungry beast outside. Actually, there were about four moans, not including the one closer to the ground, the one with the broken legs. For a moment she considered going back to sleep and ignoring their cries. God knew they needed it.

But then there was another slam against the shed, this time falling in unison with the screech of metal. Rowan was awake and looking about in an instant, looking towards the source of the sound. Kristin was already gawking at it, and Rowan could see why she was so surprised by the sound.

That was because there was no a dent in the wall of the shed, the tin caving in slightly to form half the figure of a palm.

There was another screech of metal, and another dent on the opposite side.

The shed wall was weakening. They needed to get out. Now.

"Let's get out of here!" Rowan shouted.

She was first up, reaching for the crowbar that was her weapon of choice and her bag of food, she headed for the barricaded shed doors, waiting as patiently as possible as Kristin scooped up her axe and slung her purse over her shoulder. Why she dragged that thing with her was a mystery to Rowan... Maybe because it was a secondary melee weapon, or maybe because she didn't want to lose what was in it.

If they didn't hurry, they would be losing more than what was within the purse. Already another dent appeared in the shed walls, and in one of the already formed dents, a hand broke through, the fingers that hit the tin looking broken and battered. But the monster that's arm it was attached to felt no pain.

Kristin nodded and was running to the door beside Rowan when another fist broke through the wall. This one lost about two fingers courtesy of the jagged pieces of metal around the broken hole. By the time a third hole was opened, the barricade was removed and Rowan shoved the door open, running out and swinging her crowbar and at the same time trying to keep her grocery bag still.

She was met with resistance, naturally. There were two more zombies shambling towards the shed, arms outstretched. Behind them, the ones trying to break in noticed the noise from the front of the shed and were heading in their direction. Rowan didn't have the weaponry or the speed to take all of them down. She could merely swipe the first two heading to them from the street on the head, knocking them off balance and sending them stumbling off in the other direction. Before they could return to chasing after her, Kristin was out of the shed with her axe raised, and the two whip-lashed undead sudden had no eyes to look at the humans they couldn't see through their glaze, much less a mouth to bite them with.

Before the others could even round the corner of the makeshift shelter to come in contact with them, Rowan and Kristin were running.

The trip afterwards was a brief one, without many events. Of course there were more of the acclaimed zombies in the road, and once they caught their scent the undead began to head in for the kill, but old Night of the Living Dead movies proved not to be so wrong at the fact that they were slow-moving overall. Many of the zombies tried to speed up their walking pace to catch them, but many of them also fell, their legs weak thanks to the rotting of cells within. Those that didn't fall didn't give Rowan or Kristin a run for their money. A simple strike to the head or temple, or even the chest to push them back or their legs to knock them down, got them out of danger.

The dogs, on the other hand... Well, strangely, they only saw one, and that one was dispatched by a flaming beam of metal that fell the ceiling from inside a house they passed and broke out of a window. Luck ensured that the beam fell on the dog, capturing it beneath the wooden ceiling pillar and burning it alive.

Rowan was also pleased to note, somewhat, that stopping at a gas station a few moments later proved useful. The electricity in the store was still running, although the television and radio still didn't work, and there was still no dial tone to the phone. There wasn't much use of the gas station other than grabbing up a few bits of food to replace Kristin's broken bag. They were also lucky enough to get a pot of coffee set up, after getting a container of Foldgers, some hot water, and locking the zombified cashier in the back room of the gas station/store.

They walked out about twenty minutes later, both armed with a weapon, a bag of groceries, a steaming cup of coffee, and Kristin's infamous purse. Their weapons were in one hand, the bag looped around their opposite arm and that same opposite arm holding the coffee. Rowan almost laughed at the frustration on Kristin's face when she tried to carry her purse and bag in the same hand without having it make too much noise, and the sweatshirt-clad Kristin looked relieved when she finished her coffee and tossed the styrofoam cup on the ground carelessly.

Rowan finished her own a few moments later as they strolled past a group of straggling zombies, and didn't hesitate to chuck her cup at one of them and make it swing around, only to ram into another.

Although she felt guilty afterwards because of the thought that that zombie was once a human with a life, for the moment she felt the first gleam of joy breaking through her own personal gloom. Kristin's laugh tickled her heart, and for once, she gave a pure smile.

And all the time they were unaware. Something was watching from above, its yellow eyesglaring attheir movements intensely. In only a few moments, everything was about to change.

* * *

It was so sudden that Rowan fell backwards, her arms flailing in an attempt to catch her balance and the bag groceries clattering to the ground along with her crowbar. Kristin stood still, giving a wild shriek and then jumping back, tempted to run but holding firm to her new location for the sake of helping her friend. She raised her axe with some difficulty because of what was on her arm, then shrugged off the bag and purse, grimacing at the sound of cans within the plastic bag slamming onto the pavement.

"Jeeeesus," Rowan could only whisper, now standing still and straight. Her eyes were on the beast in front of them, and on its horrible, yellow eyes gazing at them hungrily.

"The fuck is it?" Kristin hissed, stalking backwards. She hurried her pace when the beast began to mimic her, but by moving forwards.

"I don't know, but move!" Rowan shouted severely, and she stretched out an arm to grab Kristin just as the beast raised one of its own long, segmented forelimbs and swept it across the ground like a farmer harvesting a crop with a scythe.

She felt the wind blow past them as it zipped over them, heard Kristin's pained screech as it caught her in the arm, and fell back and to the ground with the larger girl beside her. Kristin caught her arm, blood seeping through her fingers, and Rowan took note of her pained expression before she struggled to stand. But her arm was trapped beneath the other girl.

Not for long.

In a single second, Kristin was no longer there, but rather within the segmented arm it swiped at ground with before. The claw at the end of it coiled around her, squeezing and slicing into her flesh, then pulled her closer to what looked like its mouth.

Rowan could only stare in shock for a moment because insects didn't _have_ mouths that big... But then, it wasn't really an insect, was it?

Beforehand, after they walked past and beyond the group of zombies and their reach, Kristin was the first to notice the sound of clicking... Very loud clicking, coming from above them. They looked up, only to find a monstrosity hanging over them, clinging to the side of the building they stood next to with claws of one side of the body, and reaching down with claws on the other side. It swiped, they dodged, and then it dropped to the ground and faced them, hissing with anticipation of a meal.

Now, that same hiss drifted from what could have been its mouth. The mandibles on either side of its opened jaw twitched excitedly, and saliva dripped from its small, but sharp, fangs. Rowan was staring blankly at it, and was only snapped out of her horror when Kristin's scream sliced through her like a knife. The girl was merely inches from the creature's mouth!

"Rowan!" she was yelling, over and over again, pleading for help.

"Shit, Kristin!" Rowan shrieked back. Her eyes paced the ground anxiously, found her crowbar, picked it up and ran forward. "Hold on!"

She swung the crowbar as she neared, and its found home, burying itself into the one leg of the beast because it stood too tall for her to get a hit at its skull. It stood a good fourteen feet tall at the least.

"Let go, you sonnuva bitch!"

But it didn't seem to notice the gaping wound in its leg. It ignored Rowan altogether. It was more focused on its future meal. Kristin's screams became more frantic as the inches lessened to centimeters.

"Fuck!" cursed Rowan, and again she swung, and again, and again. She struck the leg a total of five times before she was noticed at all, and the end result was the beast raising the wounded leg to push her aside, annoyed with her. At the same time, her friend's shriek became a pained yowl followed by the sound of ripping flesh.

Rowan's eyes widened. "No!"

Rowan didn't need to look to know what happened. Instead, she found herself in a grip of rage. If she hadn't been so focused on destroying the beast, she may have been able to think logically. But logic was useless to her now. All she knew that her friend was dead or dying, and that Rowan would make the monster pay.

Again and again, she struck with the metal weapon, striking with the sharpened in and then driving the whole thing into its leg. Only then, and most likely only because she felt the crowbar hit something hard that must have hit a bone, did the beast give any consideration to her. The sound of ripping stopped, and Kristin's mangled and bloody body was dropped from its mouth, the various teeth marks along the throat and belly and everything else showing that the damage was fatal.

Rowan's rage ended at the sight of the body. And her heart fell. Her knees weakened and she collapsed to the ground. Before her, lying bleeding on the pavement, was a Kristin who was inches away from death, and miles away from Rowan. From life. Her mouth moved, trying to speak but only emitting gurgles. Her eyes were rolling, looking here and there for no particular thing...but when they found Rowan's, they stopped. They locked gazes for a moment, Kristin's hazed eyes looked at Rowan's hazel orbswith intensity, then weakness...and then nothing. In the few seconds they matched glances, Kristin was gone.

But the monster was not.

Rowan felt it moving closer to her, heard its hiss become louder as its mouth drifted closer to her body. Somewhere within her was the will to fight it away, to slaughter it for destroying her life that was already buried in rubble. But that will faded, and her body was weak. Her mind wanted nothing more than to let go, as did every other part of her. She wanted out, and didn't want to suffer anymore. So Rowan closed her eyes and waited for the beast's jaws to close around her, and spill her life's blood.

Rowan leaned slightly to the ground, brushing the pavement with her hands and grimaced as she waited for her inevitable doom...but then her hands found something. Something with a wooden handle. At first, she was alarmed, because her crowbar was lost within the flesh of the monster and wasn't wooden, but as she opened her eyes, she realized with a twinge of her heart what it was.

Kristin's axe.

In the frenzy that occurred only moments ago, the girl had dropped it. She didn't notice it. Neither did, until now.

As the monster's mouth lowered to her body, Rowan's hands clasped around the wooden neck of the axe. Slowly, she lifted it, felt its power, felt, in a sense, Kristin's strength, and felt the newfound rage and hatred that started to boil up inside her again.

And giving a scream that could be related to something of the war cry of a banshee, she lifted the sharp weapon, swung it to the side where the creature's hiss came from-

and buried it within its skull.

What happened next was chilling enough to send Rowan scrambling back in fear, unarmed again because the axe was embedded in the bone of the beast's head. The monster, whatever it was, let out such a screech that the only surviving girl in front of the beast could hear windows shattering above them. She could see shards of glass falling to the earth as the octave the monster reached rose and quavered and as its body slammed into the building it climbed down from. Then it was silent. The body of the beast came crashing down, its insectile limbs twitching, its eyes opening and closing as if refusing to give into the dark.

Then it stopped.

Rowan waited a few more minutes before she forced herself to stand and walk to the fallen insectile. Her hands found the wooden handle of the axe and yanked it out of the skull with a sickening squelching sound. Her fingers tightened around it as she stared at the insect creature, and her rage found her again and forced her to release it. The skull of the monster was nothing more than shards of bone and mush when Rowan stepped away, her clothes and skin bloodied and the axe coated red.

Somehow she found the mental strength to walk to Kristin and stared down at her. Then she fell to her knees, dropped the weapon, covered her eyes, and wept.

And when Kristin got up again only ten minutes later, Rowan was there and barely able to gather up the strength to end her, to keep her from living that miserable existence as a zombie.

The old Rowan was gone.

She was alone.

* * *

Sorry for the delay, again. Just got Word, so, yeah. 

**Meethrill**: Yer name sounds like mythril. Sounds neat. Thanks for the reviews, and sorreh, but Sarah's not coming back... I liked her too, though. So I feel horrible for getting rid of her... As for the heartbeat thing, sorry about that but it was the only way I could get the page to break. Using the underlines and stuff didn't work for me when I put it on and since I just finished Outbreak a couple of months ago, and the heartbeat was a sound effect to it, I figured it would be a nice addition.

**Meowth's Toon Dragon:** Meowth! I love that kitty. Thanks for the review.


	6. Gunshop Kendo

**Raccoon City : Demon's Gate**

**Chapter 6**

First off, sorry about the delay. Life has just gone downhill a bit. It's tough. Got a job, dealing with parental issues, trying to actually get out and do something with my pathetic life but failing miserably. That and I've had a writer's block and was frustrated over the story line. There's going to be a big change in the series which will basically alter all three stories, eliminating most of what was in them. So therein, the other two stories - End Game, Return of a Nightmare - will be redone or deleted completely.

I'll leave them for anybody who's curious enough to see the AU version of my own story.

Also, a goof on the timeline. My bad. The days that were in the story will be set back by one. So the story will have begun on the 24th, not the 25th. The Outbreak would be on the 25th... The last chapter would have been the 26th. Afternoon-ish.

* * *

_September 26th, 1998  
12:46 P.M._

Robert Kendo had never really been a big part of the city he lived in. He was just another soul trying to make a living by doing something he loved, and that something happened to be selling, handling, and firing guns. Over time he had earned slight recognition because he often supplied the R.P.D. with their weaponry, but he was still himself. Time hadn't changed his love for his profession, and in all the ten years that he owned the gun shop and helped those who came to his store looking to buy, he kept it that way.

Because in all his years in the city, you would have thought that he would've seen a lot of strange and shifty things, or things that seemed out-of-this-world once in a while. But things like that rarely ever happened in this large but quiet area. And he didn't really expect things to change.

Of course, a couple of months ago in July, when the murders began to occur and people began vanishing from their hiking trails in the Arklay Mountains and Forest, life went from dull and loveable to strange and terrifying. From the moment the first two people were reported to have been found partially eaten along the trails outside the city, Kendo had never seen so many people barge into his gun shop, looking to buy things in order to protect themselves from possible harm. But then, after the murders, Kendo himself never left his home without a 9mm packed under the seat of his car.

Things quieted after that, after the explosion of the Spencer Estate and the arrests of the S.T.A.R.S. members accused for being intoxicated while investigating the area. Maybe they did blow up the mansion, but in doing so they halted the murders and brought some calm back to the city. Whatever they had done, had stopped the menace.

But only for a little while.

Months after the incident, they began to happen again. And the same fear that gripped the city then came back full-fledged as people flocked to the gun stores to buy ammunition and weapons, or to sports stores to buy things that could be used as blunt weapons.

Kendo expected that things would calm down. It was probably just another lunatic that was in the woods that would flee the area or be arrested courtesy of evidence against the killer thanks to Forensics. The police could find the killer.

That never happened. The murders became more numerous, and grew closer to the city. If the panic wasn't bad before, it was horrible now. The acts didn't stop, and there were no arrests made, although there were sightings of shifty looking characters here and there.

And there were no S.T.A.R.S. members, or very few, to save the day. Most of them had been suspended.

If only the police had searched more thoroughly, investigated without question. But even their forces were limited. The police chief Brian Irons dismissed the whole murder spree as nothing more than a few wild animal attacks that would disperse soon, or other excuses along those lines. He acted like he had something to hide.

_And, boy, did he._

Robert Kendo sighed, brushing the oiled cloth against the barrel of the Winchester and then tossing it aside, onto the countertop beneath a display case. He picked the gun up and looked at it, but in reality gazed past and at the bullet-proof window that faced the streets, so decimated, covered in blood and blazing with fire in some spots, or being the marching grounds for the zombies outside in others. Somewhere out there, people were wandering on the asphalt trying to escape, and while they searched for a way out, Robert refused to move. Why he didn't try to flee was beyond him, but he felt as if he should stay.

Perhaps it was the fear that if he went outside, no matter how many guns or how much ammunition he had, he would be torn to pieces. Or the cockiness that if he stayed in a place with weapons and ammo at hand, he would be a little safer from the hordes and be able to hold them back. Perhaps it was a greater calling. Maybe somebody out there, desperate to get out, would think of him and make a rush to his store to arm themselves for battles ahead. Of course, Kendo wouldn't charge. Who would when their days were numbered like this? It was the thought that mattered - that he had tried to help others in the thick of battle.

Besides, he strongly doubted he would make it out alive.

Decked in a blood-spattered pale yellow Tee and an equally stained pair of blue jeans, Kendo leaned back against the counter and took a deep breath, glancing carelessly at the door, left unlocked. Hell, it wasn't like they knew how to open them, and if the lepers grouped up into a mob, they could easily break down the barrier. What was the point in locking it then? He brushed his hand against his flattop brown hair, resting the Winchester on the counter behind him and within easy reach. He glanced once more out the window to be sure nobody was going to make a run for the shop and then kneeled down to inspect the amount of ammunition that was left. Since the outbreak the prior day, two people burst in and scavenged for whatever they could bring with them, scooping up armfuls or handfuls of shells or bullets. Despite how much they took, there was still a great deal left over, and plenty in the storage room.

As they left, each offered Kendo a chance to get out. He refused.

As their faces contorted into confusion at his negative answer, he grinned and replied, "While the war is raging, somebody's gotta help the soldiers."

He wondered, then, if he sent them to their deaths. Each person came in alone, left alone. And it was horrible to fight a battle alone. He closed his eyes and hoped that, by chance, if that yellow-vested officer and that young skateboarding teen were faring well.

The contrast in the noise outside and inside were what alerted him the most. While the chaos and screams occurred outside, inside the sound was muted. So when the noise outside suddenly became louder, like the shop was suddenly exposed to the outdoors, his eyes opened and he snapped onto his feet, reaching for the Winchester and aiming it automatically at the half-opened door. He would have fired off a deadly shot had it not been the small noise made by the person who was virtually coated in blood and looking no better than any of the beasts outside. A small voice - that was all that kept him from shooting.

"I...I..."

The person said no more, still staring at Kendo with half-lidded hazel eyes and a look on her face that showed that she cared little of anything anymore. Part of the look on the person's face, a young girl, was fearful of being killed, while another part seemed to wait hopefully for the escape from the hell they were placed into.

The strange mix of emotions on the girl's face caused Kendo to lower the weapon, and he motioned his head to the door she held half-open.

"Close it, girl, before they hear us and come lookin'," he said, more haggard than he intended.

Kendo watched her flinch inwardly at the slight rebuke and move away from the door, placing her hand on the side of it as it closed to keep it from slamming. Once it was gently closed she hesitated and then remained still.

Feeling guilty for emitting sharp words to somebody who already seemed wounded emotionally, he stepped around the counter, still holding the gun in a passive way, and moved slowly towards her. With all the blood covering the girl, he wondered if she was bitten and it was her blood, and in that was afraid she would attack if he came closer. He stopped five feet away, enough room to get time to shoot should worse come to worse.

"You're bloody. You wounded?"

She shook her head, her eyes glancing to her hand. For the first time Kendo noticed the large axe coated in the same scarlet. Apparently, she had her fair of trouble.

_But she's so young..._

Young or old, Kendo though grimly, they were all faced with the same dilemma - fight or take flight, hunt or be hunted. And even the youngest of the human race had the instinct to survive... But this was a brutal way to bring it out.

A feeling of respect welled up inside of him.

The girl was tensed up, obviously just as afraid of him as he was of her - he, of being bitten by her, and her, of being shot by him. After a moment passed and no move was made, Kendo loosened up and tried to mellow the atmosphere, if only a little.

"What's your name, kid?" he whispered, trying to introduce formalities in what was a very un-informal situation.

There was silence for a long moment. Then the girl parted her lips and said in a weak, raspy voice, "Rowan."

Kendo blinked and tilted his head. "Just Rowan?" he asked, trying to add humor to his voice. Given the situation outside, he was finding it a little difficult.

"Rowan Naton," she completed, looking down as soon as the last name was spoken. As soon as it was, Kendo pulled his head back in surprise, his eyes widening.

"Naton...I remember that name," he whispered, turning back and taking a few steps before swiveling around again. "Roid married some gal who had that last name, said his step-kid kept it." He grinned. "I should have known that anybody related to him would survive well in this kind of situation. He was a great marksman, even if it was only hunting wild game."

At the confused look on Rowan's face, he said, "Roid was my friend. Been my friend for a long time. We hunted together, you know." A look of recognition and realization crossed the child's face. "He told you then?" Kendo took a couple of steps forward, holding out his hand and suddenly feeling a little bit chipper. If the man's step-daughter survived this mess, than Roid was also well, and so was his wife. Right? At least somebody he knew survived it all... "Name's Robert Kendo."

Now she remembered. Her stepfather told her of the numerous hunting trips they went on together, how they used to tell stories with each other, routinely hang out.

Rowan took his hand and gave a weak little shake, but the grave smile on her face told the gun-shop owner that his words made her remember something grim. "Are they all right, then?"

Her face fell. So did his. Understanding seeped through him.

"I...," he began, then paused. "I won't press you, lil' miss." He nodded his head to a door near the counter and put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner. "The bathroom's back there... Why don't you go get cleaned up? You look like death warmed over." His meek smile and his weak joke seemed to pass her by. The girl's eyes were half-lidded and, with his small attempt to cheer the atmosphere, seemed to dim.

Kendo noticed how off the joke must have seemed, gently led her to the bathroom, and stood by the counter of the gun shop awaiting her to leave it. He heard the water running within, heard frantic scrubbing as the young kid - Rowan - tried to clean off the blood, and with a deep, regretful sigh, sank against the counter, covering his eyes.

There were two more casualties added to the insane body count of the city's massacre. And as if to spite him, to show his small attempts to help the survivors by providing them with ammunition and some guidance, they had been close friends.

_And I'll never see them again, never laugh..._

The sudden barrage of that knowledge, added to the weight of what was going on all around him, pushed the invulnerability he had felt by merely being in a shop with weapons away. He may not have been the one that was maimed and killed, but those he knew were, and countless other people who knew other people were dying out there, losing everything they had.

He pressed his hands against his face to try to blot the feeling of remorse out.

And a small silver of liquid dripped from his cheek to the countertop.

* * *

The ice cold water was enough to jolt her out of her half-dreaming state, but that was all. The ill feeling of clotted blood on her body still clung to her even though it was still gone. The guilt for not being able to save her friends stuck just as much. And no matter how much scrubbing she did on her hands, arms and face, the feeling of dirtiness, of blood, and all the other emotions mixed together would not leave. 

Finally she gave up, looking deep into the mirror and gazing at her own eyes. Strange how they seemed so alien, so distant. They were a mere shadow of the bright and cheerful temper that once beheld the girl, a wisp of a breeze left behind by a turbulent and vibrant tornado. Light hazel were the orbs staring back at her, rimmed with red.

Red like the blood staining her shirt and jeans. Even if she had managed to clean it all from her skin, it was all on her clothes. Plastered to her dark slate tee and blue jeans was evidence of what she had gone through, and all macabre mementos of her friends, of her family.

There was some of it within her hair, but she had washed it out. It now clung to the sides of her face, making her look like she was hopelessly drowning. The newer tears only added to the effect, but she wiped them dry quickly, feeling ashamed and as if she didn't deserve to have pain of her own when so many suffered around her. As she turned the water on once more to wash her face of guilt and mourning, she wondered if this was how the more heartful serial killers in jail felt - pained by what they had done, and not being able to change a thing that happened.

Rowan turned the water off and turned around, searching for towels and finding their paper relative in a dispenser nearby. She wiped her face dry and left the bathroom, casting one baleful look back at the reflection that contrasted her past self so well. Rowan scooped the axe off the counter, the sharp head and wooden handle now cleansed of blood.

She turned off the light as she left, and felt her eyes adjust to the sudden dimness of the room in front of her. Kendo had kept it barely lit, only bright enough to see the shell casings in front of him and not nearly bright enough to advertise their existence here to the whole undead world outside. Curiosity caused her to look at the various weapons displayed in the case behind and the ones placed inside the counter Kendo was leaning against, leaving her suddenly wondering how it would feel to have one against her temple, ready to end her misery.

The morbid thought faded back into memory rather than being pushed harshly away. Such thoughts were not so alarming anymore.

Her ghostly hazel orbs fell upon the man leaning against the counter, taking in how still he was and how a small puddle of water seemed to be forming beneath where he held his head. Her sorrow struck again. Here was a man who was a fierce fighter, according to her stepfather. He was a great hunter and usually completely ruthless when going after game, yet he was easygoing and lighthearted when he was around his friends.

But then, Roid had also told her that Kendo's fierceness had softened considerably since the attacks only a month before. Just a week ago her stepfather told her that Kendo was getting nervous and touchy, and spending longer hours in the gun shop, surrounded by protection, than he did sleeping. The ruthlessness had crumbled, exposing the soft, vulnerable man inside.

Now that man was crying silently, most likely hurt by the nonverbal information from Rowan that her parents were dead. Or maybe it was everything combined, a ball of hurt that grew with each glance at the news and, in the past couple days, outside until it was no longer a small ball but a huge globe ready to burst.

_The globe's water broke,_ Rowan thought humorlessly.

She stepped forward, half-reaching her hand out to comfort him because his pain was just as great as her's, half-holding her arm back. Finally giving into the latter command, she walked silently up beside him and leaned against the counter, softly putting the axe to rest on the glass. She drew in a deep, shaky breath.

"I'm sorry," came her whisper. Kendo's nearly silent cries halted. Almost a second later, he stood straight and wiped his eyes, glancing down at her and trying to smile and act as if nothing was wrong, that he wasn't pained. Rowan wasn't fazed by it.

"Now why would it be your f-," he began, but she didn't let him finish.

"I couldn't help them," she interrupted. "I wasn't there... I was with my friends, holding out in a crappy shed instead of going out there..." She motioned to the windows, exposing the whole smoking and bloody world to them. "I was..." Rowan hesitated then halted altogether.

"You were afraid," Kendo finished. He leaned against the surface again, looking between her and the scenery outside.

Rowan nodded weakly. "Yeah..." Her eyes were cast downward, and her voice grew noticeably softer. "By the time I actually left to find them...it was too late. The city had already been overtaken. I should've guessed. If I got there sooner..."

Kendo watched, waiting for her to finish speaking, but she never got around to it. Rather, fresh tears slid off her face and onto the ground below. Without making a noise, she lifted her hand and wiped them away, and shakily whispered, "It's my fault they're..."

She broke off because her breath caught in her throat. She hiccuped, and then, very softly, sobbed.

It hurt Robert to watch.

He placed his hand on her back. "It wasn't-"

"I could have saved them," she continued, cutting him off. "I could have saved them all...but...I was too late, I was too slow, I was too insignificant...I was...e-everything but what I should have been at the moment... And now...now they're all gone."

"But you're not," Kendo whispered.

"I might as well be," came her cold response. Her sobbing stopped, but the tears still flowed.

"You shouldn't. Roid would never have said such a thing," was the gruff reply, suddenly stern and lightly reprimanding. Rowan looked up, surprised, to see Kendo glaring down at her with a strange mix of sympathy and anger, of pride and disgust. Again Rowan recoiled just slightly, not used to the unusual stare. If anything, it made her feel more worthless.

Kendo saw the reaction. "Now now," he said quickly, "I don't mean it like that... But Roid...he was a fighter. He always stood up for himself, and for others, no matter how cocky he could get or how bad things got. No matter what dragged him down, he always got back up. He never gave up." There was a faint smile as Kendo drifted down memory lane. "Celia was just like your pop...well, step-pop. But you, you just give up? Throw in the towel?"

Rowan barked a wry laugh. "My God! What have I got left?" she half-hissed. "My friends are dead, my family's dead, my town's dead... Hell, even my pet cat is dead! Half the people I knew in this run-down city are the walking dead who only think of eating me alive!" The sarcasm in her tone was biting.

"There are still some things worth fighting for, aren't there?"

Rowan's eyes dropped. "I...don't know..."

Kendo's orbs followed the movement of her's. "Neither do I."

"You don't?" was the surprised remark.

"I haven't gotten a thing to live for, darlin'!" he laughed, half-surprised by his own words. "I'm alone, got no family, my friends are dead, and all the people who came through here, offering to let me come with them in an attempt to escape this hell... Well, I refused the offer. I'm out of shape, so it would be pointless to take off when I'll wind up winded and as somebody's lunch, anyway. And I'm old... It's hard to rebuild your life when you're halfway through it, considering I ever do get out of here..."

Rowan blinked. "You still have a chance..."

The man grinned at her. "So do you. My chances are less than slim, anyway. Besides...I feel like I should stay. Like something's waiting for me... You know what I mean?"

The girl's eyes narrowed. "Waiting for you to be on a dinner plate, you mean."

Despite the harshness of her comment, Kendo chuckled. "Maybe, but that's not what I mean. People have already come through here looking for help. Just as you did. I feel like...other people will come too."

There was a sudden spark in Rowan's eye that Kendo could not place. Her words came out in a surprised and curious tone. "Who came through?"

"Two other people," he said, waving a nonchalant hand through the air. "One was this kid in about his twenties or so... Skateboarder stunt kid, I think. His name was Rodney. He took off with a double-barreled shotgun and a pouch to carry the ammo in. Then there was this other guy... A man in a yellow vest with the S.T.A.R.S. task force symbol on his sleeve. He said his name was-"

"-Brad," she interrupted, suddenly wide-eyed.

Robert nodded. "Yeah, Brad Vickers..." He paused, then looked at her, shocked. "You know him?"

"I met him. Early, early this morning. He saved my life..." Once more, her eyes fell downward. "I remember...that he told me to meet him at the R.P.D., because we split up. Something was following him, he didn't want me to get hurt." Suddenly overpowered by guilt, Rowan held her forehead with her right palm. "I almost forgot..."

Whatever smile was on Kendo's face dispersed when the R.P.D. was mentioned. "The R.P.D...you haven't heard?" he whispered, choosing his words wisely. What he was about to say might unsettle her.

Rowan was not oblivious. She picked up on his sudden change in the tone of voice and locked eyes with him, questioning, "What?"

"When he came through, brad told me that that was where he was headed. Told me that Marvin - he's one of the cops, was holding down the fort there, trying to provide shelter for the survivors until more help arrives. But Brad told me that there would be no help coming. Didn't tell me why."

Confusion clouded Rowan's facial expressions. "So what's wrong?"

"Since nobody is coming to help the cops and the survivors there," he sighed, "they're sitting ducks. The zombies have been roving around, searching for more food. They followed the trail of sirens and gunfire without a problem, because all the forces that were around the city trying to stop them are dead, or have retreated." He winced. "The R.P.D. is completely surrounded by them. Brad says it's only a matter of time before the zombies get into the station. The last sturdy safe-haven for this city is about to crumble..."

"But the survivors--!"

"He told me he was trying to figure out way to help them get out of the station. He was using a two-way radio with somebody in the station. The R.P.D. isn't that far away from us, you know. Anyway, I overheard him saying something about a map of the place when it was still a museum... Another way out of the station, I guess. It's way too dangerous for him to get close to the R.P.D."

Then Robert's eyes lightened, barely. "Which reminds me, he also told me he was looking for a young girl by the name of Rowan. Said that he told you to get to the R.P.D., but that it would be too risky now. He couldn't find you anywhere, but I have! So now you know."

"Where did he go once he left?" Rowan asked, standing straighter, looking more alarmed.

"Back out to the city, looking for you."

"I have to find him!" she started, and stood up. The moment she was on her feet, her vision dulled and she felt as though she were spinning. Kendo reached out a hand to steady her, but she did it herself, looking panicked so that Kendo would think that was the only reason she looked so ill for a second. It wasn't all false, anyway. The realization that Brad was out there looking for her made her stomach twist.

Kendo held his hand up to make her pause anyway, but did not tell her to relax or lie down so she could calm her nerves like she had expected. Rather, he took her by the arm and led her to the locked glass door of the cabinet they had both been leaning on. He kneeled down, and motioned for her to do the same.

"If you're going out there, you'll need more than that rugged-looking axe," he said, motioning towards the weapon lying on the countertop.

Rowan realized what he was implying and raised her hands in protest. "I don't know how-"

"There's nothing you need to know, except the basics," Kendo repliedfeeling a little proud to act as the gun-shopkeeper again. He pulled out a sleek looking gun and placed it on top of the counter, then grabbed a couple of boxes that were about the size of a hand and put them beside it. As he stood up, her turned to the display case behind them both and, after opening it, pulled a polished leather belt off of the rack. He glanced back at Rowan, looked at her waist, and quickly switched the belt he held with another, smaller one.

Finally turning to her, he picked up the weapon and held it so that the barrel faced skywards. "Now this...is a standard nine millimeter beretta. The R.P.D. cops love these guns for some reason or another. Probably because they're small and it's not so hard to find the common ammunition for it." He looked at it with a smile crossing his face. "Roid loved to use these, too..."

He showed her the basics of how to aim and fire, had her repeat and mimic him, and when he was confident that she knew how to handle it, he moved on to the boxes he put beside it. "Now these... These are nine millimeter clips. Typically hold around thirteen bullets." Kendo opened one of the boxes and slid one of them into his hand. "Although they're big and take up more space than singular bullets, they are faster to load. And time is precious in this situation."

Kendo showed her how to load them and how to remove them, and finally moved on to the belt. He picked it up and handed it to her.

He pointed to each individual pocket, telling him what they were typically called and which held what. There was a holster on the right side of her thigh, and on the left side were two semi-large pouches, each big enough to hold around three clips. "Keep in mind that, since you have no idea if you will find a place that has ammunition in it or not - some people have dropped them here and there, and there are storage areas all throughout the town that hold onto these things - you won't know how long it will be until you find more for your gun. Use your ammunition sparingly. If you're in a situation where firing a gun is optional, don't waste the ammo."

Once Rowan placed the belt around her hips, Kendo smiled and lifted the gun again, which resumed its resting place on the countertop. "Now... Before you pull the trigger, know who you're shooting. There are still people out there who will think you're one of _them_." He cast a cold glance out the window to the stumbling demons outside, oblivious to the existence of the two living beings within the shop. "And vice versa."

"Friendly fire," Rowan murmured.

Kendo nodded. He kneeled down before the girl, taking her hand and patting it. He spoke in soft words, trying to display both pride and hope towards her, and searching for some meaningful wisdom to give. "Little miss Naton..."

Rowan's eyes softened as she looked to him.

"I know it seems tough. You've lost a lot of things..."

"I know."

"But if you're anything like your stepfather, I know that you'll pull through. He was a tough guy, a loving family guy who never gave up. And despite all the hardships you faced in the past few days, you pressed on just like he would have."

The words seeped through to her, gave Rowan some heart even though she felt that her own was dying. Kendo noted her silence and stood, placing both hands on her shoulders.

"You've made me proud by holding your own. By standing to fight while the world burns... Roid would be proud. Celia would be proud."

Finally, he leaned forward and gave her a little kiss on the forehead before stepping back. "Give 'em hell, and tell Brad I send my regards."

"What about you?" Rowan asked suddenly.

And Kendo smiled, his face dry of humor and lacking hope, but full of the spirit of somebody who would never give up if Death itself were staring him down. "While the war is raging, somebody's gotta help the soldiers."

* * *

Rowan's first few steps back out into the mangled city brought tears to her eyes as the acrid fumes and smoke made their way to her face. The scent of burning buildings and, even worse, rotting bodies made their way to her nostrils and remained there until, after moments of wandering, she was able to ignore it. The sight of the burning fires and crumbling houses, of bloodied sidewalks and brain-splattered walls, of walking corpses and freshly killed humans, however, would remain ingrained within her memory for years to come. 

She wandered aimlessly for long moments, not exactly certain of where to go. Kendo had said that the R.P.D. was very close by, but according to Brad's information to him, it was in its death throes, falling to ruin just like everything else. Although she longed to be inside that building, to be standing alongside people who, just like her, were fighting to survive even though they had lost everything, she couldn't take a step near them. It was as if everything in the city was doing all it could to keep the lone, living wolves apart. To slim their chances of survival.

_Divided we stand._

No smirk appeared at her inward joke.

Rowan instinctively glanced at the sky to see where the sun was, because the clock in Kendo's shop said that it was an hour past noon, meaning the sun would be heading west and to its resting place. She was disappointed when her eyes found only rolling gray clouds of smoke and ash. She squinted, not giving in to that fault, and as a reward to her search found one bright spot admist the dark coal sky. It was to her right, and since that was west, she turned to her left, to the east, and suddenly found her entire effort in finding the sun meaningless. She was unconsciously looking for the police station even though she knew that she could not get there.

So without having a clue of where to go, she moved forward. North.

Aside from the zombies and the blood dripping here and there onto the pavement, from the crashed cars and distant, desperate cries for help, there was nothing strange. Her hand fell momentarily upon the handle of the beretta packed firmly on her belt, but remembering Kendo's wisdom pulled it away. The nearest zombies were thirty or so feet away and unaware of her, so there would be no point in shooting.

Instead, she looked ahead, trying to ignore the walking, shuffling, groaning dead lingering around. She moved quietly, trying to not make a noise.

So engrossed was she in moving ahead without paying mind to the things around her, that she didn't notice the flurry of footsteps until they were almost upon her. Startled, she swung around, letting out a scream that she cut off and muffled quickly before the zombies caught wind of her.

Her own sudden movements must have startled the person who was running past her. Whoever it was swung around just as she did. For one fleeting moment, their eyes met - light hazel and dark blue - and for the whole second that they saw each other, Rowan noticed the red cap topping his head and loose pale gray tee-shirt. She also noticed the person's - his - arm move, but too late. She had no time to react as a loud explosion erupted in front of her.

There was a sudden, piercing pain and burning sensation in her chest that didn't seem to concentrate in any single area. Her whole body was in sudden agony, and as she let loose a shuddering, pained groan, her knees crumpled and she fell to the ground, her hands making their way to the bullet's entrance before her chest hit the concrete.

She was aware of hot liquid flowing onto her hands, aware of her vision dulling once more, this time by a combination of various things - from the fatigue from not getting much sleep, from the food deprivation of her body, from the depression of losing it all, from the sudden loss of plenty of blood and the incredible pain, and from the realization that her efforts to survive with her friends had all been in vain. She had tried to survive, no matter what stood in her path. Kendo's words had given her that much strength. The realization that others were hoping for her to make it out, that others wanted her to live, gave her the courage and ability to fight.

And in the tragic irony of that turning point in her mind, she was cut down the moment she made an effort to live.

What was the point in fighting, when one would only die trying?

It was all let out in one pained wail that escaped from her lips. Her baleful eyes moved upward, trying to catch a glimpse of the face of the person who killed her. One bloody hand removed itself from her chest, reaching up to the man while her face contorted into an expression of misery.

She saw the man frown down at her, raising his weapon to aim at her head.

And then saw his eyes widen in shock as he realized his error.

But rather than take her hand, rather than save her life, he backed away, suddenly fearful. The man glanced up and looked beyond her, and Rowan could barely discern the growing fearful expression when he saw something. She could hardly hear the shuffling of feet behind her as the living dead picked up the scent of freshly spilled blood and made their way to food.

Casting one final glance down, catching her pale eyes for just another second, Rowan thought she saw the faint hint of an apology on his face. He opened his mouth to say something but stopped, turned, and ran.

The tears freely ran down Rowan's cheeks. She lowered her head, dropping her hand limply to her side, and exhaled slowly. The slow, clumsy shuffles grew louder, closer. Closing her eyes, Rowan wondered if it would be painful.

The numbness that slowly began to spread from her chest to her limps seemed to answer her.

She couldn't feel the tears slip down her cheeks, onto the pavement. She could no longer feel the warm liquid seeping from one fatal wound in her chest. But she could still hear. Oh, she could still hear _them_, wailing piteously, smelling fresh food that would soon be in their never saited stomachs. Their footsteps drew closer. They were joined by another, faster pair.

As Rowan awaited to be engulfed by the darkness that started to cloud her vision moments before, she could dimly hear one pair of footsteps stop beside her. She felt herself being lifted up, up, and beyond.

Then nothing.

* * *

Next chapter hopefully up next week. Hope y'all enjoyed.  
I couldn't really get Kendo's character right, since I barely remember him from the game. Did some guesswork. Hope it turned out alright.

Son Goharotto - So do I, actually. When characters die, it kind of puts more meaning into the story. Wierd, huh? I'm trying to make this as realistic as possible. :D

Tinkies: I'll go check out the next chappie, then.

Nuke Umbrella: Thanks! Unfortunately, I'm not going to be updating End Game. I'm going to be revamping it and the second story, however. After playing Outbreak File 2, I saw that some changes needed to be made. They were drastic ones, however. Never fear.

Ivy: I mailed you. o.o? Whazzwrong?


	7. Conspiracy Unveiled

**Raccoon City : Demon's Gate**

**Chapter 7**

* * *

Sleep is a strange thing.

People avoid it in the daylight as if it were the plague. They stay up late to keep from closing their eyes, ingest high amounts of caffeine just to keep them open. Yet when they succumb to their dreams, they refuse to wake up to the reality around them. Most of the time the people who decide to wake up the sleepers are met with a bane of fury from the one passed out.

Perhaps it was because their bodies savored the comfort and the ability to relax. To not worry about anything for at least a few hours. And perhaps somehow that comfort leaked from the body to the mind and brain.

Or perhaps it was that when you sleep, you can dream. The things you dream can be damn near impossible, yet they hold the fabric of reality in the mind. Things that you have yet to experience in real life, or probably never will, can be presented to you out of the clear blue.

And things that _have_ happened in real life can be reversed if the dreamer so wills it. They could never have happened, or end happily...

So when Rowan's conscious faded from the warm feeling of being held in her mother's arms and entered into the darkness above her eyes, confusion clutched at her heart. Where was her mother? Why was it so dark?

And what in the hell was that buzzing noise?

Hazel orbs opened and slammed shut after nearly half a second, for they were struck by a blinding yellowish light that hurt her eyeballs. When she tried again, Rowan opened her eyes a crack to let them adjust to the sudden light after dark and once she assumed they were ready, opened them all the way.

The buzzing came from a half-dead light bulb above her, illuminating a light that was half as powerful as fresh bulbs. Why she heard that buzz sound was beyond her. Maybe it had something to do with why when she tried to move her head, an ice pick entered her temple.

She winced and squeezed her eyelids shut again, and at that moment heard something else. Rustling to her right. Somebody was in the room with her, but who?

When she looked up again, she was met with a half-smiling face of somebody she knew. His outlines were blurred thanks to the recent throb in her head and the pain that came with it, but after blinking to rid herself of the effect, she realized exactly who it was.

"Morning," Brad Vickers said in a voice meant to comfort and was thankfully soft against her super-sensitive ears. Then he frowned. "Well...very late at night. But you get the point?"

The smile on Rowan's face mimicked how she felt at this very moment. The very person who saved her life before, who told her to run for the sake of keeping her alive, and who had warned Kendo to warn Rowan not to make a move towards the police precinct was now leaning above her. The very person she had been hunting for before that bullet entered her gut...

_The bullet!_ Rowan thought suddenly, her headache being the only thing keeping her from sitting bolt upright. That and the pain that would ensue from said wound, that is. _Shouldn't I have...died?_

How did she live through that? The sound of her scream and the thunder of a firing gun without a doubt captured the attention of the beasts lurking the streets. Her would-be assassin took off without lending a hand, even after he had, with that flicker across his eyes, realized in the last second that the person he shot was very much alive. She was left to bleed in the streets, passing out to become a very vulnerable meal for the zombies heading towards her.

But before she passed out, she remembered the sound of footsteps running towards her. _Running._ The zombies were in such bad states that they could not run.

So it had been Brad running towards her, saving her before she could be devoured.

But how did he get her in a safe spot when he had to worry about his own back, what with zombies lying around every damned corner? How did he managed to live when he was lugging dead weight around?

_Dead weight...zombies..._

_City of the Dead..._

Everything that happened only a little while ago suddenly flooded back into her brain, and the reality of it all slammed her hard. A moment ago she was not being held by her mother, not being told that everything was okay. She was lying in the middle of this bleak-looking room, in a city succumbing to the hordes of undead...and her mother was dead.

The gravity of it all was too much. She closed her eyes and for a second dozed off before she felt a hand touch her shoulder and a concerned voice ask, "You alright?"

Rowan mumbled something incoherent meant to be, "Yeah."

Brad was able to catch what she meant to say, She heard him sigh. "You're not alright..."

Despite herself, the young teenager opened her eyes to look at him. "I am okay."

He grinned. "If you were, you wouldn't have been passed out for a day and a half over a small bullet wound." Rowan blinked, and Brad went in to explain. "The wound wasn't major, and thankfully not close enough to any vitals. The most it is now is a very painful injury. I put salve on it, dressed it. It should heal within a few days."

Before he could progress into whatever else he was going to say after the fact, Rowan said, "You said...I was out for a day and a half...?"

Brad nodded.

"What day _is_ it?"

"The twenty-seventh. It's around...," he paused, looking down at his right wrist where a leather-banded watch was tied, "eleven thirty."

Rowan groaned and closed her eyes, hit with an exhaustion half-induced by the pain she was in, and the awareness that nearly three days have passed with Raccoon in this predicament.

Vickers took the initiative and added, "The reason you crashed was because you weren't taking care of yourself."

Again Rowan felt the need to defend herself. "I'm alive, aren't I?"

"If I didn't show up, you wouldn't be."

She didn't anything. He was right about that.

"When I found you, you looked like - pardon my French - like shit. You were pale as a ghost, you were weak, and after a while you took on the appearance of being dehydrated. The few times you woke up from your comatose state, I was able to get you to drink some water...and you would pass out a second afterwards. I didn't manage to give you food...so if you're awake for a little longer, I have some things you can eat."

The girl opened her eyes and watched the man turn around to rummage in some sort of duffel back lying on the ground behind him. While he looked, Rowan cast a glance around, taking in the crubmling off-white walls and a ceiling with the same color, save for the black speckles. There was no furniture decorating the walls as they had all been moved to her left, against a door to act as a barricade in case somebody unwanted should come a-knocking.

"Where are we?" she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper. The realization that there may be undead hunting for them in the outside hallway was enough to make her lower her voice.

Brad looked back and shook his head. "No need to whisper. We're on the second floor of an apartment building. All the nasties are downstairs and outside, and the elevator's dead." He turned back. "I locked the doors to the staircase, and just in case blocked them all up. I checked this floor for any of those creatures. All the rooms and halls are empty."

"How did you get me up here?"

"It was pretty hard," he said. "I took off like a bat outta hell. Carrying a little girl, a duffel bag, and a gun is a hard task to pull off. So I didn't stick around or waste any bullets on the zombies out there. I found an apartment building, but there were creatures swarming the streets. I was lucky to find a fire escape ladder hanging down, climbed up to the second balcony." He nodded to his gun. "The room I came into - this room - was empty. I left you in here and went to clear out the hallways and stairwells. Left the duffel bag, too. I figured that if you woke up...and if I didn't come back... at least you would have the supplies to survive."

Rowan was silent, then looked to her right and found that a window was boarded up. "So what's with the window?" came another inquiry as she gritted her teeth against the pound against her head from the movement.

"Birds," was the reply. His body swung around again, his hands loaded with items. In his left, two candy bars and a bottle of spring water. Not healthy, but if it would hold her stomach back... In his right hand, there were two pills. She recognized them as Excedrin.

Rowan all-too willingly snatched them from his hand, quickly undoing the lid of the water bottle and downing a swig and the pills before her head could get a chance to react by pounding. As she reached for a candy bar with a timid grin, she noted, "Last I checked, birds eat seeds and some eat small animals. Like mice. Not people."

She didn't expect Brad to sigh or his voice to suddenly become low and tired. "That isn't when they're infected."

Rowan paused mid-bite. "Infected?"

"Whatever it was that spread throughout the city, that got all the people here...it spread to other creatures. Like cats," he said, looking at her. Rowan nodded, remembering Sphynx. "And dogs. Birds too, apparently."

Rowan uttered, "Shit," under her breath.

"I couldn't believe it...but I should have. Jill did tell me that Forest was killed by crows..."

"Forest?" Rowan whispered, not having heard of this before. "Who's Forest."

Brad shook his head and went back to the duffel bag. "Listen, once you're feeling better, we'll--"

"Brad," she cut him off, "you never told me what happened."

The S.T.A.R.S. pilot hesitated.

"You left off with saying that it was a long story, what happened. That what is hurting the people in this town is a virus...and that your friends are in Europe. One is still in town."

Still nothing, and he still had his back to her. But he wasn't digging around in the bag, either.

"What happened, Brad?" she whispered. "I need to know...my mother...my family...my friends..."

He tensed.

"I need to know what - who - killed them."

With a sigh, he gave in. The young man swung around so that he was facing Rowan and lowered his head. "Fine... You'll need to know anyway. If I don't make it out, you'll be left in the dark."

"You'll make it out," Rowan said with a firmness she never knew she had.

Brad offered a smile, but said nothing to counter her words. "Jill Valentine and I were both part of the S.T.A.R.S. team. As you know. The team was split into two groups - Alpha, containing me, Jill, Chris Redfield, Barry Burton, Joseph Frost, and Albert," his face scrunched up, "Wesker; and Bravo, with Enrico Marini, Rebecca Chambers, Edward Dewey, Richard Aiken, Forest Speyer, Kevin Dooley, and Kenneth Sullivan. Each of us had a special attribute that allowed us to become the S.T.A.R.S. team. Enrico was the acting leader of Bravo. Wesker was the Alpha's leader.

"Our job was never really easy from the start. There would always be problems happening in the city limits - drug lords needing to be taken down, prostitution rings to be disbanded, hostage situations, robberies, killers...so on. Just like an ordinary city. But the problems of this city had less magnitude than those of other cities. At least most of them... That was before July of 1998 rolled around."

Brad held his head.

"None of us expected it to happen...

"Weeks before the whole ordeal occurred, there were murders and kidnappings occurring here and there. Well, not kidnappings. People vanished, only to be found later mauled and...partially eaten. Most of the victims were humans, but occasionally a dog or a cat would turn loose and be found maimed. At first, everybody suspected that it was a cannibal murderer, that there was somebody in the forest waiting for victims to come within his reach. Officers began to block the entrances into the Arklay Forest at the beginning of July, but the murders continued.

"The panic got hold of the people. By near the end of July, the people and the mayor of Raccoon himself turned to the police chief, Brian Irons. He gave in to their demands and sent the S.T.A.R.S. team out to the forest to investigate the situation.

"Studies traced the Spencer Estate, a massive mansion plotted in the middle of the Arklay Forest, to be the epicenter of the attacks. That didn't mean that it had anything to do with the attacks - just that they seem to originate from the area. On July...23rd, I believe, the Bravo Team was sent in to investigate and control the situation. If they couldn't handle it, or needed help, Alpha would follow them and do what they could.

"Things didn't go so well. Their chopper began to malfunction as they drew closer to the mansion, and soon all contact with them was lost.

"The Alpha team waited for any kind of signal to come form the team, but after nearly a day passed and nothing was received on our end, it was time for us to move in. I revved up the 'copter and flew the others to the mansion. The first discovery we made was grim. Rising from the ground in the dead of night was a plume of dark smoke, and beneath it was the wreckage of their chopper. Not really wrecked, but damaged badly enough so as not to fly again.

"I landed, and the others left the chopper to investigate whatever was inside, to see if anybody was hurt. I heard on the radio that they didn't find anything...except for the remaining body of Kevin."

Here, Brad paused. He took a deep breath, and it seemed agonized.

"He wasn't killed by the crash."

Rowan blinked. "Then what...?"

"There were scratches and bites...all over him. The others said that it looked like he was attacked by a wild animal. A minute after that, we knew exactly what attacked him...because then it - they - got Joseph.

"As soon as the group returned to search through the forest to find any survivors of the Bravo Team, Joseph was attacked by dogs. Dobermans, the others had told me. But they looked...rotten. Dead. Like the ones that are wandering the streets now."

"They were infected," Rowan whispered. Brad nodded.

"Before Joseph was attacked, I heard things moving around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Something in the woods, watching me. I could barely make out their shapes, but something about the way they stood waiting, something about the growls I heard from them, reminded me of dogs. I had a flashlight, turned it in their direction, and I caught a glimpse of one of their eyes reflecting the light. It was pale, milky...

"Hearing the scream from Joseph the next minute did little to calm my nerves. Nor did the flashes of gunfire ahead, and the yells of the others. Seeing the creatures I caught a glimpse of tense up as if to attack snapped whatever was holding me back from running away. I didn't want to die, didn't want to experience whatever the others were witnessing. I wanted out. I wanted to go home.

"So I lifted off. I left the rotors and the engine running, so it took me a few seconds to get in the air. I managed to pull up just as the creatures I saw began to run for me. One jumped for the helicopter and missed by a scant few inches. Another actually made it _into_ the chopper. Somehow I was able to open the door on my side and lean back just enough so that it went flying out of the helicopter and onto the ground below.

"And as I left, I realized my mistake in moving. The rest of my team was still moving down there. By that time I realized they were missing one person. I didn't find out until much later that it was Joseph. Despite the fact that I heard them calling for me, both from on the ground and through the radio...I couldn't go back. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to go out being torn to pieces. Despite the yearning I had to help them, my instinct to run from danger was stronger."

"You left them to die," Rowan asked, her eyes considerably wider than they were a second ago. Her tone had shifted, going from terrified, to awe-struck.

Brad held a hand up. "Before you accuse me of anything, yes, I realize that what I did was foolish. Had I returned to the ground to give them time to hop into the chopper, we would have all made it home safely. but something about the whole situation didn't seem right to me. I had to flee, not only because I wanted to. It seemed to me, at the time, to be the right thing to do. The time it seemed right was only for about two second. By the time I decided that I should turn back, they were already making a beeline towards the mansion, and the dogs were too close to them to grant them time for me to land and the team to get in."

He winced. "No...I'm making up excuses," he said after a moment. "I was afraid...and that was that. there was no greater meaning... I just ran away. Ol' Chickenheart at it again..."

"Brad," Rowan whispered, wanting to comfort him. But he was already moving on with the story.

"I didn't circle back until it was too late. As I said, they were heading for the mansion. By the time I flew back to the spot where I originally landed, they were inside it... I thought, 'That's good. They'll be safe in there.' At the time, I didn't realize that the building housed enough traps to rival the mob of dogs outside, nor did I realize that the people who were actually inside were no longer among the living..."

"The _mansion_ was filled with infected people?" Rowan half-shouted, horror-stricken.

"It was the source. Mostly, from what I was told later."

The look on Rowan's face was priceless.

"In the next few hours," Brad continued, "I circled around the mansion, hoping and praying for some glimmer of life from within. Chris, Jill, and Wesker still had radios to contact me with, but for some reason, every message I got from them was broken up, and every one that I sent out was never responded to. Soon even the efforts they made to get ahold of me died down and stopped completely, but I still circled the mansion.

"By the time dawn was beginning to approach, the helicopter's fuel was getting low. If they were still in the mansion and needed to get out...they needed to hurry, or there would be no helicopter to get them out. So I tried to get ahold of them one last time. I said that if they were still in the estate, to give me some sort of signal.

"At first, I got no response. But then I heard Jill's voice on the other end, sounding as angelic as ever. The message was still broken up, but I heard her give an affirmative. I replied, and although she didn't respond something told me that she heard me.

"So I circled around again, waiting... A half-hour after that hopeful message with little over a quarter of a tank of fuel to spare, I saw it. A flare in the sky. I followed and found that it led to a helipad where Jill stood. A second later I saw Barry, Chris, and Rebecca Chambers enter the pad and make their way towards the center. I started to lower the chopper, but something else decided to make an entrance.

"Even after Jill explained it to me, I still don't want to believe what it was, or even _why_ it was."

He trailed off. Rowan stared at him for a moment, giving him a second to get a breather, then said, "And?"

Brad gave a nod to himself and continued. "It could have been classified as a human, had it not been for impossibly rippling muscles and pale skin...or the fact that it stood nearly six and a half feet tall and had a monstrous, exposed heart. Or a clawed arm and various exposed arteries pulsing up and down its body."

Rowan gaped. "What...?"

"Jill told me later that it was called a 'Tyrant'. It was, at one point in time, a human that had been injected with the virus running amok in the city right now, but it was of a different strain. It affected the person in such a way that it transformed the person completely, rather than making him, or her, into a mindless, flesh-eating human like those outside. However, it still seemed to have a taste for blood, because it went after the others with such a fury that it's only purpose had to be to kill.

"Chris was hit first. The thing slammed its arm into him so heavily that he went flying clear across the roof. It knocked him unconscious. Rebecca and Barry started firing at it to keep the creature from going anywhere closer to Chris, and Jill started to help. But for all the bullets they used, they didn't even make the damn thing _waver_. Jill was using a grenade launcher, Barry a magnum, Rebecca a beretta, but the thing didn't stop, didn't hesitate...

"I decided there was only one thing to knock this beast down. And I had it in the helicopter. We never really used it - it was only brought with us in case of some sort of colossal, massive emergency. And given the case I would say this was one of those emergencies. So I set the helicopter to hover for a moment, ran back and grabbed the item, and shoved it out of the side door of the helicopter. Jill was closest, so she picked the beast up."

"What was it?" Rowan asked.

Brad returned her question with a sheepish-looking grin. "A rocket launcher."

Something about the comment made her chuckle.

"It only took one shot to take the Tyrant out. I was able to lower the helicopter safely. Jill and Rebecca loaded in first, then Barry with Chris. I lifted off, and as soon as we were a safe distance away from the mansion, Jill decided to fill me in on a self-destruct sequence that was set there. We were out of the line of fire by the time the sequence ended."

Rowan nodded, remembering watching that event unfold before her very eyes. Half the people of Raccoon City had scrambled out of their houses at the sound of an explosion. Even from across town one could have seen the towering cloud of smoke and debris rising into the air above the forest. A few could even make out the helicopter fleeing from the scene.

Once Brad finished recounting the events of the mansion as he had seen them, he took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling for a moment longer. Rowan now knew what he had seen...but she did not know the cause, of the entire ordeal...or of the pandemonium that swept the city. What happened in the mansion? What happened to the rest of the team members?

She didn't need to mention anything before he started to explain, his voice now haggard and weary. If she didn't know any better and didn't see him right in front of her, she would have assumed him to be well into his sixties by the very tone.

"At first, everybody viewed me with scorn, which was natural considering that I ran out of them in their time of need. They ignored me, threw me cold looks whenever I went to apologize or ask a question. Despite the attempts I made to make it up to them, there really is no way to repair the wounds made by dooming comrades to die in that mansion, and around it.

"The cold shoulder lasted for a week and a half, right up until Chief Brian Irons began to question them all after giving them considerable time to mourn. Actually...he didn't really interrogate them at all. He berated them, scorned them. He accused them of being drunk at the time of the mission, therein setting the mansion on fire and, when it hit a gas line, causing it to explode. He seemed to ignore the fact that the explosion of the mansion seemed to eradicate the cannibalistic murders. the press forgot, too. They got hold of the accusation the chief threw off, and soon they were published in papers everywhere. Wherever my teammates and I went, there was always somebody watching us with a hateful glare.

"Out of all the people in Raccoon, however, some did come up to say thank you to us. Those select few noticed how the murders stopped with the mansion's death and decided that, even if it was all part of some drunken escapade, it saved the lives of the civilians.

"To get back on track, whenever Irons called a meeting for us, he always fired off a barrage of insults at my comrades, and strangely not one of them was fired at me. Most likely because I had nothing to do with the events as I had fled at the time. Jill and the others made that clear the very second we returned. Either way, no matter how many times Irons demanded information, Jill and Chris and Barry and the others refused to let on anything, pulling off a whole story that they couldn't remember any of it. I could tell by the way they looked at each other and to me that they were lying. They didn't want Irons to know something, and I was determined to know what."

"Irons never said a thing to you?" Rowan questioned.

Brad shook his head. "Nah. Like I said, he didn't think I did anything wrong. While the others were expelled from duty, I still retained my pilot job as the last S.T.A.R.S. team member. After the mansion incident, I flew a couple of missions for the chief...but I otherwise steered clear after that. Irons hadn't been acting like himself after the whole incident. Well...he was still as bitchy as ever, but moreso and retreated to his office whenever something seemed to go wrong for him. His temper got out of control, and more than once I heard his secretary worrying whether or not he was going to do harm to her.

"Every time I would try to cut into the one-sided argument, though, to tell the chief that I saw that damned Tyrant with my own eyes and was quite sober at the time - I did fly us back, after all - the others would shoot me looks before I could get a word out. Initially I thought that they didn't think I deserved to have a say in anything...but there was something else.

"So I managed to confront Barry in a bar some weeks after the event. We tried to get into normal conversation, but it was hard. He was honestly the only one I could talk to. Chris was so pissed off at me that he wouldn't bother to spare a glance. Jill was only half-sympathetic, and whenever I tried to talk to Rebecca she either burst into tears or came close to it. Barry had a helluva lot of sympathy and empathy and was generally easy to talk to. It may have had something to do with him living with a wife and child, or maybe he just felt bad for the way I was being cast out.

"The very weak conversation we had switched over to him asking me if I really wanted to know what happened. I said that I did, and he told me to keep an eye on the mail. The next day I got a package. It had all these files and journals inside, even had a CD that, when I viewed...had Kenneth's last moments."

Brad shuddered, and Rowan sympathized.

"I needed to hide the box after I saw what was in it. If anybody else found those files...it would put my teammates and I in a very bad position..."

Again, he trailed off. The young thirteen-year-old blinked at him with all the patience in the world, tilting her head and waiting. A minute passed before he kept on.

"The things those letter, memos, journals told of... The things they mentioned... Good god, it was so hard to comprehend that such a thing was possible. But that Tyrant on the roof of the mansion was real enough to prove it was more than fiction... The people in that mansion...what they created...what they worked with..."

Brad sighed, casting a glance up to the girl before him and wondering if he should continue. She was young, and hearing what he was about to say could make the whole world around her crumble. _Too late...she's lost everything but her life..._ The oddly vacant expression on her face told him so.

"It was a virus," he finished. "They created a virus in there, some years back. In the sixties or seventies, around the time of the old LSD Experiments - you probably don't know what that is."

"A virus," Rowan repeated.

Brad nodded. "It was such that it could contaminate any living, and probably dead, being, and attack the immune system. It could keep the living alive even when their vitals became near or at death, and would only provide..." He hesitated and rubbed his eyes. How the hell was he going to explain this all to a girl in middle school, who more than likely hadn't even gone into chemistry yet? He wasn't good at it himself!

"Hell," he muttered, spinning around and diving his hands into the duffel back. Where was that old letter? A gleam of familiar writing met his eye and he snatched it out, holding it triumphantly in the air for a second before lowering it to Rowan's hands. "Here...it can explain better than I ever can. It doesn't have many details...but it's enough."

Confused, Rowan took the paper and stared down at the hastily scribbled letter with a bland expression on her face. The words flowed and circled around in her mind as she took them in.

It was a letter, dated on June 3, 1998, nearly three months ago.

_My dearest Alma._

_Let me first apologize for not being able to call you. A man wearing  
sunglasses didn't permit any phone calls. Sorry Alma._

_I sit here trying to think of where to begin, of how to explain in a few  
simple words all that's happened in my life since we last spoke, and  
already I fail._

_I hope this letter finds you well, and that you'll forgive the tangents  
of my pen; this isn't easy for me._

_Even as I write, I can feel the simplest of concepts slipping away, lost  
to feelings of despair and confusion -- but I have to tell you what's in  
my heart before I can rest. Alma, please believe that what I'm telling  
you is the truth._

_The entire story would take hours for me to tell you, and time is short,  
so accept these things as fact: last month there was an accident in the  
lab and the virus we were studying leaked._

_All my colleagues who were infected are dead or dying, and the nature of  
the disease is such that those still living have lost their senses.  
This virus robs its victims of their humanity, forcing them in their  
sickness to seek out and destroy life._

_Even as I write these words, I can hear them, pressing against my door  
like mindless, hungry animals._

_Alma, I have tried to survive only to see you again. But my efforts  
only delayed the inevitable; I am infected, and there is no cure for  
what will follow -- except to end my life before I lose the only thing  
that separates me from them._

_My love for you._

_In an hour I'll have entered my eternal sleep where there is peace.  
Please understand. Please know that I'm sorry._

_Martin Crackhorn_

Even as she read the last few lines, Brad's voice seeped back through her ears.

"I was told through the memos that it was called the T-Virus. It could affect virtually anything, living or dead. When I managed to speak to Jill about the subject later, she mentioned that there was a plant thriving within the mansion that was affected by the same virus! It seemed impossible...but there it is. _Here_ it is...all around us."

"The work of a madman's dream," Rowan whispered, staring down blankly at the letter. Her vision seemed to blur a little, but it had nothing to do with the headache. That was fading and nearly gone from existence. When she brought up her hand to wipe at her suddenly burning eyes, it became wet with tears. This was all too surreal...

Her tone suddenly low and bitter, Rowan muttered, "Who did it?"

Brad stiffened. Here it came...

"The very company that helped to found this city. The very company that provides medicines to the sick, and healthcare to those in need of it. The company that helped humans in need so much was underhandedly using them as guinea pigs."

Rowan glanced up, her face hard. She knew where this was leading. Her teachers had crammed so much history about Raccoon City into their heads...

"Umbrella," they both whispered at the same time, their voices oddly at the same level in the same, harsh whisper.

"They specialized in healthcare and genetics...," Brad murmured. "And in that field they were able to freely manipulate the human body, screw with the genes and cells... They could create viruses to aid in the rebirth of skin cells, and viruses that could destroy all living matter."

Disbelief washed over Rowan. how could that be? The company helped so many people in the decades it was alive? How could it spin around and stick a needle into the backs of their unsuspecting victims?

"How could they be unnoticed?" she asked to herself, not really knowing she said it aloud.

"Umbrella has money, and that's all that matters in this goddamned world nowadays. Money rules over human and animal rights...and most of everything else. They also had power. They could shield certain events from the government, or the people all around the world, courtesy of clever cover-ups and people who work to enforce it." He grimaced. "That, and other companies would pay top-dollar for a creation like that. Those companies could help...and carry on the legacy if a certain sector of Umbrella should fail."

"Invincible," she choked out.

"They try to be."

"Aren't they?"

"We're alive, aren't we?" Brad replied firmly. "As long as somebody stands to oppose them... Even Chickenhearts can go lion once in a while."

Rowan was scarcely aware of more tears trickling slowly down her face until some reached the tip of her nose. Before she could react to it, Brad reached over and wiped them away, a look crossing his face that reminded her of the fatherly features of Roid...and his eyes slowly becoming watery.

She sniffed. "What happened...to the others?"

"They," came his voice, "all died... Kenneth...he was attacked by a zombie in the mansion. Forest was attacked by crows." With each person he mentioned, his voice got heavier. The water in his eyes grew thicker. "Edward was killed by a dog, Richard was poisoned by an infected snake. Enrico...he..." Brad closed his eyes. When a lone tear slipped down his cheekbones, he was not ashamed. "Chris and Jill met him below the mansion, in a catacomb structure. The mansion had numerous trap-doors and underground facilities, mind you. he was wounded...but still kicking enough to try to inform Jill and Chris. He started to mention that one of our teammates had turned traitor, but when he started to mention who, somebody form the darkness shot him. Fatally.

"Jill and Chris didn't find out until much later that the assailant was Barry."

"Barry?" Rowan hissed, her tone raised. "But...but he-"

"He was being used, manipulated like a damn puppet. The person pulling the strings threatened that his family would be on the line if he disobeyed. That person forced him to kill Enrico, very nearly got him to wipe out Jill...but Barry was cunning. He snuck up on said person, gave him a blow to the head, and aided Jill in the shock that ensued. It turned out that said person was the one who was helping them out throughout the mansion. It was Albert Wesker." Rowan noticed that Brad's voice suddenly became low and dangerous. An anger shook his body from head to toe. Blinking, the girl took another bite out of the candy bar and threw the empty wrapper aside.

"Wesker was working for another corporation called White Umbrella. It was an illusive comrade to the main Umbrella corporation...and Wesker was obsessed with it. All along, he was working with the company that provided the virus creating the monsters. The creatures that he himself had to fight in order to obtain his goal, which was swiped from him anyway."

"How?" Rowan asked.

"He woke up some time after being knocked out. Sadly, he survived being unconscious in a dark, dank corridor. Jill encountered him in a laboratory near the helipad, standing in front of various tanks that held all sorts of distorted looking beasts created to be Umbrella's new toys. The one he held in reverie most was the tank holding the Tyrant. He began to rant on about how it was the most magnificent creation as he drained the tank of the stabilizing fluid entombing it. He was so...caught up in his own speech, that he didn't notice the Tyrant wake up until it was too late.

"By the time he tried to back off, the creature jammed its claws through him."

Rowan winced mentally and physically. Brad only frowned at the thought. He may have been noted as a coward, but when it came to this particular subject he was as fierce as he would ever be.

"Deservedly death," Rowan hissed. there was a slight pulse of anger rushing through her veins. Although she was no at the mansion when the events happened, she could feel the pain and agony the scientists working there must have gone through in their last moments...and she could understand the woe and despair felt by the S.T.A.R.S. members who encountered it.

He nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but at that very moment was cut off by a loud bang on the opposite side of the door. It came from somewhere in the hallway, far enough away from the apartment they were stowed away in. But it was close enough.

Rowan shot a look over to Brad, her face a distorted mixture of confusion and anger, of excitement and blind fear. "I thought you said that you cleared the floor?" she hissed, trying not to attract more attention from the creatures making their way to their floor. A second bang, followed closely by a third. There was more than one zombie.

Brad nodded, speaking even as he stood and rushed to the duffel bag, quickly ramming everything he took out back in. As Rowan stood, he grabbed up the blanket he covered her with when she was still out cold and tried to shove it in with the various other things in the bag. "I did! The elevator is dead...the stairwells - _shit_!"

"What?" Rowan snatched the beretta lying at her feet.

"I only blocked the stairs leading down! I forgot about the one leading _up!_"

The girl vaguely wondered how in the hell the zombies that were upstairs didn't hear the noise downstairs. Obviously Brad had been quiet as a mouse when he entered the apartment building, save for the gunshots he fired off when he cleaned house upon arrival. Then maybe the creatures pounding on the stairwell door outside for the now eighth time didn't reanimate until after he showed up...

That was the least of their concerns, for with the ninth and tenth slam against the door in the hall came the sound of hinges breaking and the slam of the door falling to the ground.

And the moans of the dead barging through the open space, searching for the sounds of the living they heard through the floor above.

Not a split second later both Rowan and Brad, with the duffel slung over his shoulder, were making a mad dash to a fire-escape exit. As they blasted past the boarded up window and through the exit, they could only hope that the zombies couldn't climb ladders. The sound of their feet on the metal grating of the escape was dimmed out as the undead in the hall managed to pinpoint their scent and sounds. They were pounding on the door of the room they were in seconds ago.

They heard wood cracking the moment they stood over the rungs of the ladder, and by the time they were both on it the sound increased. Then, like the other door, it fell off of its hinges and struck the makeshift barricade that was against it. The larger thud gave the fact that the dresser that made up most of the barricade was down. Moans grew louder, melding with the noise of feet scrambling across fallen wood.

Brad, as the first one on the ground, looked up past Rowan to see the first zombie - a women who looked to be around twenty, with long blood-soaked blonde hair, tumble through the fire-exit. Her foot caught on the grating and like a projectile she flew to the other side and flipped over the railing. Two more followed, one actually staying on the landing, searching blindly for the two live humans. Hands stripped of skin and dotted with coagulated blood began to burst forth from the window with a shatter of glass and wood.

Rowan's feet hit the ground. She removed herself from the ladder and immediately began to sway, her legs not used to the effort after a day and a half of laying almost lifelessly on a floor. A guiding arm from Brad wrapped around her shoulder and steered her left, to a nearly desolated street with one or two stragglers shuffling here and there.

The two were moving away from the scene even as two more zombies flipped over the railing and made impact with the concrete below. Another slipped through the hole over the ladder.

Brad looked back at the ravaged building and then back again to the child he was helping. They locked eyes, and Brad offered a grin. "How was that for a rush?"

Rowan laughed.

Watching it all from above was a single narrowed white eye.

* * *

First of all, sorry for the long delay. one thing you guys might have noticed about me is that I have a tendency to procrastinate.

I have two major projects to work on in the coming week, so there won't be updates for a while.

Thankfully, I quit my job. I have more time on my hands now.


End file.
